New Feature: Check available disk space before start

Discuss new features and functions
Posts: 2
Joined: 18 Aug 2021

lukpir

Hi,
would it be possible to get an notification before the synchronization will be started, in case that the destination device does not have enough disk-space?
And also, if the copy process is stopped due to lacking disk-space?

Thanks a lot!

Best regards,
Lukas

(I have encountered this problem using the donation edition v 11.1)
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Posts: 2451
Joined: 22 Aug 2012

Plerry

Very little is impossible, but don't count on a robust solution for this anytime soon.
The problem is not only how to robustly request the remaining diskspace for the different filesystems that FFS covers, but the solutions would also need to cover cases in which plenty of disk space is available, but due to user quota, capacity for that user is limited and may be exceeded by a sync (even if just temporary, due fail-safe file copying). This means there should be a robust way to check for the remaining, unused part of a quotum. And this obviously again for the different filesystems that FFS covers
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xCSxXenon

Check your free disk space and compare it to the space required for sync, only option so far
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Joined: 18 Aug 2021

lukpir

Thanks for the reply!
Of course it can be checked manually, I just wasn't aware of it otherwise I wouln't have started the process of course...
@Plerry, I agree, that the full solution requires many steps, however I belive that for most cases a simple check of the remaning disk space would already do the job.
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Plerry

Be aware that even (up front) comparing available disk space to "the space required for sync" does not guarantee you will not run out of disk space, due to FFS's fail-safe file-copying feature (if not deactivated).
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xCSxXenon

I always wonder how people run out of space honestly. If you are that close to being full, it's time to upgrade the storage. If it's just a large amount of data, you should be checking disk space anyway. Storage is so cheap right now. Windows has probably auto-compressed those drives anyway, killing all the performance
Posts: 1
Joined: 23 Aug 2021

mightything

Disk space checking on target drive would be good.

I experienced this yesterday, so hit "stop". Freefilesync processing continued (working on the recycle bin, I believe). When it had finished, I found the drive miraculously had gained 150gb of spare space!

I think this may be a related issue about recycle bin processing overflow - see this thread: viewtopic.php?t=8249&p=30574&hilit=delete#p30574

If this is perhaps the cause of the "disk full" I experienced, should Freefilesync process deletions & recycle bin changes before initiating copy of new files?

Hope this thought helps.
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xCSxXenon

That risks data loss so the way it is supposed to work is:
1: Copy file to destination with .ffs_tmp extension
2: After successful copy, delete destination file
3: Rename then temp copy to the original name

It doesn't queue the deletions and then do them all at once, at least it isn't supposed to from what I've read
Posts: 4
Joined: 6 Aug 2021

Hikkupz

as a first step in the sync process, ffs could delete the files that are going to end up being deleted and not updated.
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Joined: 9 Dec 2007

Zenju

would it be possible to get an notification before the synchronization will be started, in case that the destination device does not have enough disk-space? lukpir, 18 Aug 2021, 10:14
Already implemented.

as a first step in the sync process, ffs could delete the files that are going to end up being deleted and not updated. Hikkupz, 26 Aug 2021, 19:47
FFS is already doing that.


The main problem with calculating required disk space is the recycle bin: Will a file moved to the recycle bin free generate some disk space or not? Can't tell. Even if you knew, you don't know how much space exactly. This is an implementation detail of the recycle bin.

In order to not give false positive warnings, FFS errs on the side of assuming that recycling *will* free disk space according to the size of the deleted file.
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Joined: 6 Aug 2021

Hikkupz

thanks. that's what i was trying to say that but my fingers got confused and clicked send before I was done editing my message.

:thumbs_up: