[Help] USB files disappearing

[AndyB]

For some time now I've had scheduled backups from my F2-210 to an external 1TB Samsung HDD.

This is split across several jobs, some that run nightly, some at weekends. I recently checked whether recent backups had been taking place by browsing the files on the external HDD. For some reason only one set of backups was showing (users home directories). Other backups including music, video and photographs were not showing.

This in itself is strange, however yesterday I manually ran those jobs and could see the files being copied over.

Today I've had reason to check the backup HDD and once again all of the backups that I ran yesterday are again missing, with the drive showing more available free space once again.

What's going on here?

[MikeZhang]

This phenomenon is rather unusual. Especially since you could see the files were indeed copied to the external HDD when you manually ran the backup task yesterday, but these files disappeared the next day, while the available disk space recovered. This suggests the problem might not be that the backup task wasn't executed, but rather that the backup task subsequently underwent cleanup, synchronization, or overwriting.

We recommend checking the following:

1. Check the target path of the backup task.

Confirm that the target directories for tasks like music, videos, and photos haven't changed, and that they aren't pointing to a temporary directory or mount point. You can check the source and target paths in the task configurations separately.

2. Check if version control/retention policies are enabled.

Some backup tasks may delete older versions according to their retention rules. If multiple tasks use the same target directory, it's possible that one task is cleaning up data generated by another.

3. Check for I/O or file system errors on the HDD.

If the files were visible yesterday but suddenly disappeared today, and the available space has recovered, we recommend checking the system logs and the HDD's SMART status.

4. Check if other automated tasks are deleting files.

For example, another backup task, synchronization task, or scheduled cleanup task. If multiple tasks are using the same external HDD, it is recommended to temporarily disable other tasks and only keep the problematic backup task running for testing.