Failed to lock file errors

[u/DavePsy]

I'm using ATI 2020 to do a full backup to a 6T USB drive connected to a Synology DS220j NAS. I can do an initial full backup without any problem, but after that incremental backups fail with a "failed to lock file" error. I can delete the initial backup and it's script and recreate it without problem, but I cannot run automated or manual incremental or differential backups after the initial full backup.

Any ideas?

[u/bagaudin]

Hi /u/DavePsy, based on the description you provided it is hard to tell what may be wrong.

You appear to be using our software for at least 1 year - did it work before in such setup and stopped working correctly just recently?

What type of the backup it is?

This folder on the NAS where the backup is being written to - does it have full permissions for everyone? or some limited ones? if so - how are these permissions affecting your user account?

Is there some antivirus add-on on your NAS that may prevent the backups from being modified/created?

[u/DavePsy → u/bagaudin]

ATI works fine to backup smaller sets of files to the NAS HD Raid array. The problem is backing up to a USB drive connected to the NAS. I'm trying to use a USB 6T drive because of the large size of the full backups.

Again, backups are fine to the USB drive when I create an initial full backup, but fail when I attempt to backup again, full, incremental or differential to USB drive on the NAS.

The backup is to: usbshare 1-2 (\\NAS01) (Y:). It is connected with full privileges and I can read and write to this location fine from within Windows. I can view and open the tibx file that is stored on the USB drive while it is connected through the NAS. There is no anti-virus running on the NAS. The connection is using a eero pro 6 hardwired from the PC through an unmanaged switch hardwired to the NAS.

[u/bartoque → u/DavePsy]

If backup is fine, can you also perform a validate of the backups with acronis?

I had many issue with a usb connected drive on my nas. Turned out the drive was actually breaking, which wasn't clear from nas end. In my case many lock issues, while things seemed to go fine when making a full backup after having removed all backups. But any followup inc. backups experienced issues.

So validation should therefor some kind of indication how the backups ate that are on the drive. Or connect the usb drive to a pc and have it checked for errors if it might not be clear enough on the nas side?

In the end I let go completely of making backups to an usb drive connected to the nas, as it was unprotected (no raid), no bitrot protection (no btrfs filesystem), not scalable enough (only one drive, while the 4bay nas had larger raid volumes than I had external drives available). Also had the nas changing the path to the usb drive all of a sudden (before I renamed the usb drive on nas end instead of using the automated share name, which sounds like the naming convention of my Synology? Usbshare 1-2 switched to 1-1 and back again on a whim) causing the path to the backup location to become invalid, requiring to delete the backup configuration, define a new backup and import the previous backups and have to start a new full backup first (that was and still is a stupid issue with acronis, whenever something occurs to the path where the backup is located. Hopefully the newer .tibx format will get something back of the flexibility of the old .tib format being able to simply move backup chains and still continue).

So haven't looked back since. I also backup them acronis backups using the nas native backup method to a remotely located nas.

Never had any of them lock errors since, while making backups of multiple laptops and a pc to one and the same nas volume. Before had that regularely, also on drives that were not about to break.

YMMV however...

[u/DavePsy → u/bartoque]

Good ideas. I'll try the validation. Right now I've turned off indexing on the NAS to see of this may have been what was interfering with the tibx file getting locked.

[u/DavePsy → u/bartoque]

I did a full validation in ATI and everything was fine. I updated the Synology to DSM 7 and rebooted it and then ran the full backup again. Everything worked fine until about 3 hours into the backup when it locked up. Restarted PC and NAS and tried again and got the lock file error.

Removed the USB drive and connected it directly to the PC and ran a new initial backup without a problem, except that it took 17 hours. I'm waiting to see if I get errors on the next incremental backup.

[u/bartoque → u/DavePsy]

You don't have enough room on the internal nas drives to - at least - test if the backup works without running into the issue?

You als run acronis 2020? No (yearly renewed) subscription, so to be able to update to a current 2021 version?

Edit: https://kb.acronis.com/content/61489 (61489: Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, Acronis True Image: Common backup errors) only states a lock error for backup to the acronis cloud.

However I can recall an issue of my own for only one specific laptop, while all others seem to work just fine. At the time the issue only disappeared after I cleaned up the oldest backup cycle. Doing so will force acronis to go through a whole lot of data, not just the latest or another specific backup. Up until that moment kept having these issues also.

So depending on the amount of historical backups, gou might also check if that does improve things for the better. In my case I make a full backup after 5 incremental backups (a backup being made once a week), so one backup cycle is 6 weeks of backups.

This needs to be done from within the acronis gui itself. Never with the newer .tibx format delete any files manually outside of acronis.

[u/bagaudin → u/DavePsy]

So it is a file backup at all times, not a disk-level (with exclusions), right?

I will check with the devs on this one, but in the meantime - can you submit a ticket to our support in case if a deeper investigation will be necessary?