Versioning on the Recycle bin

[Giangi]

I have selected the option to keep deleted/change files on the Recycle Bin,
but only the "root" folder FFS _DateTime_ is being trashed so if I need to
just restore one specific file I have to restore all the tree!

FFS should delete each single file directly from the original location and not
just delete the above parking container...
I know that this will be slower but it wil help the user a lot!!

[Giangi]

What about a "fixed" versioning into a subfolder of the directories pairs?

Something like creating a _FFS hidden subfolder, automatically added to
the exclusion filter and where all files (db, locks, etc) should be kept. Here
creating the versioning timestamped folders!
You may then consider to add the option for cleaning it up too! Like "keeping
last X runs" or "keeping last X days" :-)

[Zenju]

You're right, the use of this intermediate folder to hold files and folders,
before moving to recycle bin is a performance optimization, but it's quite
massive. One might argue, the inability to find files located in subfolders is
a Windows Recycler visualization problem only ;)
As for the fixed subfolder, the functionality is already there, one may use a
fixed folder as "user-defined directory" and exclude it from synchronization.
When evaluating the inconvenience of having to do this manually against yet
another GUI option, I'd rather not offer a short-cut for this.
> keeping last X runs
Not so easy this one. In general this would be an important feature. But then
again, this is exactly what differentiates Windows Recycler from "user-defined
directory". Consequently this is only required for volumes that do not have a
Recycle bin, which is a much smaller use-case. Again for this smaller use-case
one has to judge the advantage of having this feature (often it's even then
not required, unless you deal with large files), against a much larger impact
on GUI this time: new options: keep last X days, keep up to X bytes, keep last
X sync sessions... Not a clear win.

[Giangi]

I know what you mean, but having FFS handling the "fixed versioning folder" is
much easier (user's point of view :-)) to manage!!

For the "keep X" options take it as a very-really-low priority nice-to-have.

I'm more interested on the first option: single files into the recycle bin!

CIao, Giangi

[Giangi]

> As for the fixed subfolder, the functionality is already there, one may use
a fixed folder as "user-defined directory" and exclude it from
synchronization. When evaluating the inconvenience of having to do this
manually against yet another GUI option, I'd rather not offer a short-cut for
this.



...but there is only one Versioning folder setting! It means that everything,
either being left- or right-side, will go into the same folder? How about
after a Mirror job to discriminate where was a file?

[Zenju]

> but there is only one Versioning folder setting
Yes, it's not exactly a replacement, but the disadvantage is "only"
performance, not functionality: The files that would otherwise be split up
into two directories are merged into a single user-defined directory without a
name-clash. From a "Versioning" point of view this is not too bad, since all
old version are at one place.

[Giangi]

This time I do not completely agree with you... having one versioning folder
into each "side" I think is better... but I have to try to understand/"touch"
it better... :-)

[alittlelost]

I have an issue with the latest version. I have replace a retired server and
attempted to do a new sync but it fails in GUI mode or batch mode with:

FreeFileSync - Batch execution - 12/29/2011
-------------------------------------------
Synchronization completed with errors!
Start
Fatal Error: User-defined directory for deletion was not specified!
Warning: Synchronization completed with errors!
Stop (Total time: 01:30:52)

I set the batch and GUI to ignore errors and to Version the files that exist.
So what am I missing here, it worked with the old box fine under 2.3 for 3
years?

[Zenju]

You haven't specified a target directory for versioning (= empty).

[alittlelost]

Thanks for the quick reply, I was trying NOT to move anything in the archive
to another directory as I have serveral thousand docs that have the
"ffs_tmp_1,2 etc" and want to preserve the copies in case of corruption back
to the archive origination date. So is this possibe with some filters or am I
going at it all wrong? Mike

[alittlelost]

The version I used before was 3.19, sorry.

[Zenju]

What exactly is it that you are trying to achieve?

[alittlelost]

I have an external NAS drive at a remote co-location that I use nightly to
copy all changed files to an archive that is all files and changes since
01-2009 when the archive was started for a law office. This allows
reproduction of files from past dates outside of our normal 2 week local
tape/disk archive rotation in case of corruption of an original to the extent
that we have to go back beyond two weeks. The current file store is 60+ GB so
you can see why it's outgrown our tape capabilities within reason, economics,
backup time window and the fact that everyone says tape is dead so disk and
NAS are it. With the NAS being a raid box and in a solid site we have the
confidence not to play tape and disk rotation off site.I would have to pull
the box and bring it local to do a complete new file set and loos all the
changes over time to get everything back in sync. I like the new features and
all but a true update/add function in the batch scenario to me would be a big
plus so that's my issue. I used a copy of 3.2 from our other remote site to
get it functional for now but I'm sure(hope) this is just a patch until I
figure the settings for the new one out.

I had assumed that the update settings would do versioning the way it did
before which was and extension with a number instead of a deletion of any sort
hence my question.

[alittlelost]

I can add a copy of the functional script of 3.2 if that would give any
indication of why the new version doesn't accept "no deletions". Mike

[Zenju]

Thanks for clarifying. So you specified "versioning", didn't enter a
directory, but expected FFS to keep the files in their directories, but append
some version suffix. Now I see the source of confusion. "Versioning" was
called "user-defined directory" in previous releases. I'll adapt the error
message accordingly. The current version of FFS only supports moving files to
a time-stamped target directory, which is essentially a variant of a "recycle
bin", but without any limit on number of entries or size.

[alittlelost]

Z,
Sorry for my confusion but I took versioning literally and thanks for the
clarification. I guess that would be a feature request then to do both, one
for the deletion directory and one for the file extension to be used in the
renaming of old versions scenario. My issue with the "time stamped directory"
is the creation of more sub-trees in the archive filesystem that would need
searching to find the related target. Now I have the one tree that is
identical to the tree on the local volume but with the aforementioned versions
in place. I have 3.2 now on the unit and it ran flawlessly last night and
synced 169 MB for a weeks changes out to the archive. Thanks for your help on
this great little tool and continued success and good health to you and yours.
Mike