Problem with "orphan" target files in backups

[sbertolucci]

Lately I sometimes got deletion errors in a profile (it's a regular Backup, mirror source to target profile).
So I went to the backup destination, manually deleted the "offending" files/folders, performed a rescan and everything ran smoothly till the next similar error.
Today I think I figured out what happens. The scenario is this:
The backup set is for the Visual Studio Projects folder.
I set it up years ago.
In the meantime the number of projects is grown, so with the aim to speedup the backup I've gone to the profile settings and excluded from backup the files which don't actually need to be backed up, like the compiled .exe or .dll files and so on.
What happens is that, since backups were performed before without the exclusion, the previously backed up exe or dll files remained in the backup target.
Recently I've gone through some revision of my projects and I've moved some of them (their whole folder/subfolders) in a "Obsolete" subfolder.
And here is where the errors occurs. When VV tries to delete a folder it thinks is empty it actually finds a folder with some files inside it is not aware of (because of the exclusions) and raises an error.

I think that, maybe, when an exclusion is set an optional "rescan and purge" of the target should be performed in order to remove existing excluded items from the target itself. It would also help to keep the backup set neat and the same kind of purge should be made feasible also in archive sets. This of course for backups, not for syncs.

Stefano

[TGRMN Software]

Hello,

yes, the option to remove excluded files from target would be quite useful I think. But the folder it self should be excluded if it contains only excluded files. What version / build are you using?

thanks
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[sbertolucci]

I'm using the latest of both VV and VVEngine

VV 2.5 build 2504
VVE 2.0 (Build 2.003)

I think that the error occurs because the folder doesn't initially contain only excluded files.
It contains regularly backed up files AND excluded files from old backups that are there because they wern't excluded in the past.
When VV feels that a particular folder has been deleted (or moved which is the same) it correctly proceeds with the deletion of all the files it thinks are there but, when eventually it tries to delete the folder itself it cannot because there are still the old files VV isn't aware anymore due to the recent exclusion.

[TGRMN Software]

Ah, yes! But if you re-run after the first error, the error no longer shows because now the folder has only excluded files? thanks
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TGRMN Software Support
http://www.tgrmn.com
http://www.compareandmerge.com

[sbertolucci]

Correct. After the first error a Re-Run (with Rescan) does not raise another error.
This is true ONLY when the folders in the backup contain only excluded files.
If they contain also excluded subfolders (I excluded all the ..\bin\ subfolders) which in turn contain files (which might not be excluded themselves like .xml files) the error keeps apperaring even with a rescan.
I think that the whole situation is rather complicated !!