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Backed up external drive with 795 GB of files shows 620 GB when fully backed up

Dropbox backup seems unable to properly read file system of external ExFAT drive. Drive has 795 GB in use—but for first few days of backup, Dropbox believed drive had 50 GB of data, then 70, then 100, then 120 GB...

It claims to be done, but then you navigate online backup and find many folders are empty, so you return to plugging it in...

After letting it go on and off for days (constantly exercising drive/making it hot), Dropbox Backup now claims external drive is fully backed up... at 620 GB.

Is it? Or is this another bad report? There are now enough files transferred that I don't see obvious empty folders to confirm that Backup is incomplete... but there is still a file size discrepancy of 175 GB.

Am I done with backup? Is there more that is missing? How do customers figure this out?

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Hannah

Hey @planimal, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Let's see what we can find.

Is the drive constantly plugged into the computer?

Would you mind sending us a screenshot of what you see in your backups page here?

Thanks in advance.

planimal

Yes, but it's the same as described—regularly and everywhere proclaims "done" when backups are actually incomplete, as previously described. Even now, I don't believe it's correctly and fully backed up all drive contents that are reported as filesize 795 GB by drive itself.

I had it plugged in for long (12 hour periods) over a course of days. I've just plugged it in again, but last backup remains about a week ago. Discrepancy in file sizes remains. I suspect if I went and made some dummy files in subfolders, I might trigger it catching a few more files, but it seems unable to survey the disk and file system to correctly ascertain for itself whether it's backed everything up or not.

Hannah

Thanks for the update and the additional info, @planimal.

Would you mind sending us a screenshot of your external drive's usage as well? The actual size of the files in the external drive, I mean.

Thanks.

planimal

Hannah

Thanks for that, @planimal.

Is it possible that not all your folders in the drive are selected to be backed up?

If you click on the "manage backup" option, you should be able to see if any of them are not selected.

Let me know what you find.

planimal

- All folders have always been selected for backup.
- Drive was radically misreporting size and completion level for many days before seemingly settling at current value (and I suspect I could trigger it to re-evaluate and arrive at yet a new number and completion goal again—I did so in past by adding small token text files to the drive.)
- I believe Dropbox team should have all necessary information to repeat experiment on your end.

Perhaps more helpful to view my correspondence as less of a help question than a bug report—this system is, I think, broken. I don't see how customers be confident of total backup when system is regularly mis-reporting the amount to back up and the completion percentage / "Done" state.

Update: I decided to try the old trick of adding new files to drive to see if would trigger a recalculation, and unfortunately this time result was even worse—Backup continues to insist drive is "done" and fully backed up as of 6 days ago. Does not acknowledge there are new files on the drive at all, even after quitting Dropbox, unmounting and remounting drive, and restarting Dropbox, and even explicitly demanding that it "backup now". From my perspective, app needs to revisit how it queries disk usage and size so is not missing things.

Hannah

Thanks for the reply and the update, @planimal.

Just to confirm, is the Dropbox desktop app syncing as normal otherwise? Like, if you add a file to your local Dropbox folder, does it sync to your account online?

planimal

yes, regular functionality is fine, I just believe issue with Dropbox Backup product.

Hannah

I see, @planimal, no worries, your feedback is noted and I just reached out to you via email, in case you'd like to look further into this.