-----Original Message----- > Don't assume what the problem is and try to solve it. First find it. > There may be something interesting in the system logs (in /var/log/). > > Your subject line says "tar causing problems" but I feel sure it > won't > be tar which is causing the problems. I also doubt that it's > anything > as complicated as Ubuntu doing things for GUIs. > > Would I be right in guessing that it's a USB-connected drive? > They've > almost always caused problems for me. USB disconnects happen all the > time, and for most USB devices a reconnect is fine. For mass storage > devices unfortunately that's often not the case. > > Is the drive spinning down when not busy? That's the default for > many > USB devices I've seen and that often causes problems too - but you > can > prevent it from doing that easily enough. Maybe you'd have more luck > if you run something just before the backup takes place which > accesses > the drive, to spin it up, if that's a problem. > > Are you backing up 2TB of videos? I'd probably exclude them from the > regular backups. > > Well I've done enough guessing for one post. :)
Thanks Ged. Great guessing. It is a USB-connected drive. In fact I have my whole collection of backuppc backups on another USB drive which has never caused a problem in its life (5 years or so). OK so that's writing to the USB drive, not reading it like the issue here. I scanned the problem USB drive with smartctl and with gnome-utilities and it logged nothing. I checked in the syslog and I can't see any other log files that it might be using. How would I run something automatically before backup? Or do you mean manually? BTW you are right that I'm backing up 2TB of videos. Obviously though, video files never change so theoretically, backuppc should only ever have one copy of each video file. Space hasn't become an issue yet. Thanks Adam
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