[Owncloud] Fwd: How I just lost 2/3 of my files to the sync-client

[Andrew Warren]

Benjamin Schieder wrote:

> I was able to restore the files from another machines sync directory,
> but it was very scary nonetheless.

Thank you for the warning, Benjamin.

Reading the sentence I quoted above, it now seems obvious (although I had never thought to do this before) that when upgrading the sync client or the Owncloud server -- or making any large change to the synced directories -- it is probably a really good idea to temporarily disable syncing to one client in order to protect its synced directory from being corrupted if anything goes wrong.

I mean... I have server snapshots taken every four hours, and my clients are backed up regularly, but the backup files are (intentionally) not easy to access, and they can of course be up to four hours old.  And besides, a backup that occurs halfway through a sync or while a file is open might not be perfect anyway.

For these reasons, I have in the past made a temporary copy of one client's synced directory just before upgrading the client or server.  But lately, my synced directory is so large that finding disk space (and time) for a copy is difficult.  Disabling the sync client on a machine that is already synced takes no time and no extra disk space, and it preserves an up-to-the-minute, internally consistent backup that can be easily copied back to the server if necessary.

I haven't looked at the Owncloud documentation lately, but I assume that it says (maybe in multiple places) something like "It is recommended to have a recent backup whenever making a large change to your system".  Perhaps it would be helpful to also suggest temporarily disabling one sync client.

-Andrew

=== Andrew Warren  - awarren at synaptics.com
=== Synaptics, Inc - Santa Clara, CA