Error 183

Posts: 13 · bmoyernw 29 Apr 2015, 05:43

I'm mirroring music from one computer to another. For every album, I get an Error 183 (cannot create a file when that file already exists) on the folder.jpg file. There's nothing specific that I'm doing to create this error (is there?); there seems to be something about the way it's copying that creates this error every time. Any way to avoid this?

There's the option to ignore, but it says "ignore future errors" - I don't know if this means it will ignore ALL errors or just future versions of 183 (vague wording). But even so, folder.jpg has album art, so I'd really prefer if it mirrored it like it should.

I've seen some other 183 threads that have had no response; not sure why that is, but this is not an obvious thing, so I'm hoping someone has some advice.

Posts: 13 · bmoyernw 29 Apr 2015, 05:57

A bit more info. After the mirror operation is complete, it lists the files on the left that it had trouble with. It *seems* like I can copy them over just fine then, manually. Not totally sure that's what's happening because it's kind of cryptic. But if I can copy them over manually, then why can't FFS do it automatically?

I then looked at the hidden files and didn't see the folder.jpgs anywhere. But what's odd is that I was originally synching, not mirroring. This problem didn't come up then. But synching had other glitches, so I changed to mirroring. Those albums that I mirrored have a desktop hidden file in them. Those that I synched don't. I have no idea if any of this is related, but it's not intuitive or obvious what's going on.

Posts: 7282 · Zenju 29 Apr 2015, 09:02

Can you post the full error message that you are seeing?

Posts: 13 · bmoyernw 29 Apr 2015, 14:55

Sure. It's attached.

Posts: 7282 · Zenju 29 Apr 2015, 15:03

Is the error message correct, in other words: does the file in the RecycleBin.ffs_tmp directory already exist at the time the message is shown?

BTW which version of FreeFileSync are you using?

Posts: 13 · bmoyernw 29 Apr 2015, 15:08

OK, this is odd. Last night when mirroring, I had three albums and three 'folder.jpg' complaints. This morning I re-did the mirroring to get the error message, and, surprisingly, it had more stuff to copy. Nothing has changed from last night - if there was more to copy, why didn't it do so last night? Also, instead of three complaints, there were two. So I did the mirroring yet again, immediately, and it was able to process the last two files with no complaints. (The first FFS run I've ever done where it finished without any errors... there always something...)

So repeating the sync seems to work for the files it complained about. (To be clear, that's not a solution; it's just more information.) I won't be able to repeat that to see if it happens consistently until I have more to mirror (tonight or tomorrow).

Posts: 13 · bmoyernw 29 Apr 2015, 15:14

I have no idea whether that directory exists. I certainly didn't create it, and there's no reason for it to exist prior to FFS running. The ".ffs_tmp" in the name makes me assume that it's a temporary directory that FFS creates itself. When I look around, I don't see such a directory.

BTW, I saw in some other threads when Googling about this (threads that were not about FFS) that a "move" automatically creates a destination directory, and if you "create" the directory first and then "move," Windows throws this error. I don't know if FFS is doing a create-then-move in this case... (I'm not a Windows expert... Also doesn't explain why only these files...)

Also, one last clarification: in my second post, where I thought I had copied the files over manually, I definitely had not. I'm not sure what was going on there, but disregard that bit.

Posts: 7282 · Zenju 29 Apr 2015, 16:06

Next time you encounter this error, check if the target file is indeed existing as the error message suggests: If yes, then this might be something worth investigating. In any case, try to create a minimal reproducible test case to simplify trouble-shooting.

Posts: 13 · bmoyernw 11 May 2015, 02:31

OK, this is frustrating. I finally had time to do thorough documentation... and the error disappeared. Like the noise in your car that doesn't happen at the mechanics shop. Only you're not making it up. <sigh>

I have no idea what changed. The receiving machine may have been rebooted (I had some travel, so it was in a variety of hotel/conference/airport environments) since the last time. I'm pretty sure the source wasn't; it just went to sleep or hibernated.

When it happens, it happens consistently. If it happens again, I'll come back. I know, this should be good news. But nothing got fixed, so it seems illusory.

Posts: 13 · bmoyernw 11 May 2015, 02:48

Just for thoroughness, I want to list three things that did change between before and now. None of them seem to me like they should matter, but in case there's more than meets the eye and something triggers an idea, I list them here.

1. On both source and destination machines, folder options were set to show file types and hidden files. I did this so that I could take thorough, unambiguous screen shots of folder contents at various stages of the operation. I assume this affects only how the folder is viewed, and would not affect FFS.

2. I had to change a permission on the destination machine so that I could save a screenshot from the source machine onto the destination machine over the HomeGroup. But this permission affected a folder in the Documents library; the music is in the Music library, and no permissions were changed there. So again, seems like this shouldn't matter.

3. Normally, I would hit "Sync" and it first does a compare and then I'd click OK to start the mirroring process. In this case, I didn't hit OK because I first wanted to take a screenshot of the state of folders as FFS viewed them prior to mirroring. I then went back and completed the sync. It doesn't seem like this should matter either, but it is something I did differently from before.