'Successful Synch' Actually Isn't

[fevers]

Hello:

New to the program, which is just what I needed.

Setup:

External hard drive crash the other day, all music files (m4a), about 540GB.
Restored from backup to different drive.
Many files copied with one or two altered bytes, often resulting in static burst during playback.
Using binary compare within Folder Compare to isolate problem files.

Problem:

When I attempt synch mirrors on the problem children, the following frequently happens: during the synch process, the filenames (left and right panels) will turn gray, then turn red again. Meanwhile, the log at the bottom of the screen indicates that the synch was successful for the one or many files I have attempted to synch. After, when I do a byte-level binary compare on one of the files in question, the discrepancy remains. I find that I often must attempt a synch several times on a file before it is successful, even though the log indicates that every try has worked.

As I say, this program is exactly right for my needs, but I don't understand the issue I'm encountering here.

Any help most appreciated. Cheers.

[fevers]

A bit of a followup. The nightmare deepens, but I can get somewhere if I have an answer to this question:

In folder compare, if I sync from an existing folder in one directory to a same-named (but empty) folder in a different directory, how is it possible that most or all of the newly-created files would have binary differences from the originals? This happens regularly now.

FYI, the differences are very consistent. Generally 1-7 differences per file (m4a files with average size of 30MB but ranging from 15-90MB), all differences in the second column from the offset, all with value differences of 2 (for instance, 29 becomes 2B or 27, or 2D becomes 2F or 2B).

Anyone?

[Zoë]

Did you restore your backup to the same drive that crashed? I've never heard of anything like this before, but it sounds like a hardware fault to me. Have you tried copying the files that are consistently failing to another location/drive to see if it still exhibits the same problem?

[fevers]

Did you restore your backup to the same drive that crashed? I've never heard of anything like this before, but it sounds like a hardware fault to me. Have you tried copying the files that are consistently failing to another location/drive to see if it still exhibits the same problem?

No, I restored to a different drive.

I have since tried a number of experiments, and I can do some pretty interesting stuff. It's boggling, really, beyond anything I've seen.

An example: I have a folder of Album A, with 10 songs in it. I do a folder compare, and all ten songs have binary differences. If I highlight all ten, perhaps three will successfully sync, but the log at screen bottom tells me all ten synched successfully. Meanwhile, I've still got seven red files staring at me. What works best (in the short term) is to then open up a binary compare for each song one at a time. I then close the compare and do a sync on the one song, and the filename turns gray and disappears. Then on to the next. Eventually I knock out all ten. This I can do consistently. However, I then move on to other compares and other synchs, then come back to Album A. And lo and behold, some or all of those songs have binary differences again.

This is the closest I have ever come to having that 'ghost in the machine' feeling. Nothing makes sense. I can recreate this same sort of scenario on different drives or within the same drive.

I do wonder: I have 3GB of RAM and as I'm new I'm not sure how BC uses it. Given that my average file is 40MB, what would you consider a reasonable number of files to be working with (within a folder) at a time? As I am working with a total of 1.1TB of music files, I want to do as few new folder compares as possible.

Any suggestions or questions are most welcome. I'm like a cat in a tumble dryer right now.

[Aaron]

Hello,

Could you send some screenshots to [email protected] ? Please include a link to this forum post.

It sounds like you may be doing a rules-based compare instead of a binary compare when double-click on your MP3s. This returns Equal if the mp3 tags are equal; not if the files are actually 100% binary equivalent.

Also, how are your session settings setup? (Please include a saved session and your Support package in the email. Help menu -> Support; Export). If your Content Comparison is not overriding the Quick Compares, then Red could simply mean newer? What color is the center column's eqaul/unequal sign?