I've been a long-time happy user of FreeFileSync, and I would
like to ask a feature which I learned via my Synology NAS system.
Disks apparently only have a certain time on which data is guaranteed (5 years or so?)
Synology can (if your disks are in raid) perform an action which is called 'Data Scrubbing'
Question : Would it be possible to have this function in FreeFileSync?
That you can load the filelist of a certain drive, and start a scrub action, which will
eventually read and re-write every byte on the disk, to prevent data loss over the years.
Thanks in advance!
Data Scrubbing (Feature Request)
- Posts: 1
- Joined: 8 Mar 2025
-
- Posts: 2607
- Joined: 22 Aug 2012
> Would it be possible to have this function in FreeFileSync?
Very little is impossible.
But the task of data scrubbing is so different to/from data synchronization that it seems very unlikely that the author of FFS would even consider to add such feature.
Data scrubbing is a very specific task, for which FFS would need to be able to learn the
FFS is normally fully unaware of the "nature" of the storage medium of a data resource , e.g. that it concerns hard-disks in a redundant form of raid (not raid0).
And for its present tasks FFS does not need to be aware of such "nature".
To FFS your NAS is simply a network resource, which FFS addresses at protocol and OS level, not at hardware level.
Next to that, data scrubbing is an action performed at disk level, while FFS operates at file level.
Very little is impossible.
But the task of data scrubbing is so different to/from data synchronization that it seems very unlikely that the author of FFS would even consider to add such feature.
Data scrubbing is a very specific task, for which FFS would need to be able to learn the
FFS is normally fully unaware of the "nature" of the storage medium of a data resource , e.g. that it concerns hard-disks in a redundant form of raid (not raid0).
And for its present tasks FFS does not need to be aware of such "nature".
To FFS your NAS is simply a network resource, which FFS addresses at protocol and OS level, not at hardware level.
Next to that, data scrubbing is an action performed at disk level, while FFS operates at file level.
-
- Posts: 4289
- Joined: 11 Jun 2019
You are talking about two different things. Reading/writing every byte on the disk is referred to as a "refresh". This functionality is best done at a hardware level, not a file-system level. Spinrite was and is still a fairly popular choice for this, but access is lost during this since it runs at the hardware level. Alternatively, Synology's offering is NOT a refresh. It uses pre-calculated checksums to verify file integrity and correct any found errors. They don't seem to provide technical details, but it is very unlikely they are doing anything more than correcting single bits/blocks, which is not a refresh like you are describing.
Either way, FFS isn't the correct place for these features. Those are more suited to be included in the storage management side of an environment, and FFS isn't storage management
Either way, FFS isn't the correct place for these features. Those are more suited to be included in the storage management side of an environment, and FFS isn't storage management
