Sunday, March 26, 2023

Technical help

Dear readers, if anyone is a tech type, I could use some help.

Each week I do a full backup of my computer. This includes a full backup of this blog. On Blogger, the option to back up is found in the "Settings" file.

However for the past couple of months, the blog backup does not complete. It gets about 25 percent finished and then quits. (Sorry for the poor-quality screenshots below.)

The full blog backup should be about 142,000 KB, but as you can see, I can't get beyond 33,755 KB. And yes, it stops at nearly the same point – 33,755 KB – each and every time. (This morning's attempt, for example, stopped at 33,752 KB.)

I've tried backing up dozens of times, and even on different computers, with no luck. I'm sure it's a glitch with Blogger itself, but no amount of internet searching reveals a solution to the issue.

Interestingly, this same thing happened a few years ago. I backed up the blog regularly without a problem, and then one day – boom! – it stopped doing complete backups and did this partial-backup nonsense. A few months later, Blogger (the company) updated its software (which was annoying, because it meant I had to re-learn how to post things), but the one advantage is the backup system worked again.

And now, abruptly, it's back to the same issue. I've searched and searched online for anyone facing a similar issue, and haven't found anything that helps.

Does anyone have any advice for how to overcome this problem so I can complete a backup?

UPDATE: Just to clarify, my computer backup works fine. The thumb drive works fine. But before I do the computer backup, I back up the blog, which is entirely out of my control. I can't exclude any files because Blogger backs everything up in one lump. Nor can I control where Blogger sends the backup file – it always goes to my computer's download file. In short, this is a Blogger issue, and I guess what I was hoping for is someone familiar enough with Blogger to explain why its backup program stalls. I've never had any luck trying to contact Blogger's tech support, since it's too big of a company to pay attention to a small fry like me.

17 comments:

  1. The first question I have to ask is where are you backing up your information? Are you backing up local, external hard drive attached to your computer or remote, something like Google Drive? Also, are you using backup software? Lastly, how many backups are you keeping? I really don't think it has anything to do with the site itself. It may have just been a coincidence. The only thing that I can think of is the size limitation of the file on your computer. If you keep months and months of backups, that starts eating away at your hard drive space on your computer. Also, you mention that you do a full backup of your computer. That takes up a lot of space as well. You may want to see how much space is left on your C: drive and see if that is the problem.

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    1. The main backup goes to an external thumb drive (which has plenty of room). Once the current backup is complete, I delete the older backup, so I don't have any surplus backups. I'm not using backup software; I simply copy my "Documents" file onto the thumb drive, then copy photo files separately. I have no other files on my computer – no games or anything. Literally just photos and Word documents. I have lots and lots and LOTS of space on my laptop's hard drive (611 GB available) as well as the external thumb drive.

      I don't use Google Drive (don't even know how) nor do I have a Cloud account (whatever the heck that is).

      The blog itself is saved on my computer, which is then copied to the external thumb drive.

      - Patrice

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    2. Thumb drives are most likely the problem. What I have found is that the thumb drives and SD cards "act up" exactly as you described. The fix is to buy the better quality ones. For example the Extreme Pro from SanDisc.

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    3. The thumb drive works perfectly. I do the blog backup BEFORE copying everything to the thumb drive. It's the blog that won't back up; the computer backs up just fine.

      - Patrice

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    4. You may be 100% correct. I of course cannot know from 1200 miles away. But I had virtualy an identical problem while trying to back up to an SD card and thumb drive both of which were the cheapest available at Walmart. I googled the problem and the answer I found was that the better quality thumb/SD drives generally won't have this problem. I bought one and tried it and problem was gone. I might add that when I googled it I saw numerous other comments about people having identical problems with the cheap drives. So please give it a try. I am very frugal (my wife says cheap) and it hurt me to buy the more expensive drive but I did it and was pleased with the result. I still don't know why it doesn't work with my old thumb/SD drives but it simply doesn't

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  2. Give percussive maintenance a try. It's a recognized maintenance method, and all you need is a hammer, or bat, or golf club.........

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  3. I just attempted to back-up my blog and it slowed to a crawl at about 48MB. So slow you might as well say that it stalled-out

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  4. There could be a couple of different reasons for this. Most likely it's a bug with the backup routine/software. The other possibility is that there is something in the data that is causing the backup to fail at the same point. This could be a corrupted file, malicious code in one of the files that is being detected or blocked by security software. Also, try backing up to a different location. Without analyzing the backup logs it's going to be hard to determine where the issue is. Try posting on Reddit to see if someone else has had this issue.

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  5. Since it is a simple manual copy that you are doing, try copying smaller chunks of your documents folder at a time. What you will likely find is that one of your files is corrupt. You will be able to copy all the others but not the corrupt one. Once you single that one out, try opening it and re-saving under a new file name. Then back it up like the rest.

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    1. The information on my computer backs up perfectly. It's the blog that won't back up.

      - Patrice

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  6. Is it stopping at the same file or folder? Try to exclude that file or folder from the backup.
    If there's nothing else on your backup drive, try a complete format (as opposed to 'quick format').
    You mention deleting old backups. As a long-time sysadmin, I strongly advise two tested backups on two separate storage medii.

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  7. >The information on my computer backs up perfectly.
    To the same backup drive? Then the drive is fine. It's either a corrupt file/folder that needs excluded, or a bug in the backup software.
    If you had command-line access, you'd never have a problem like this. GUI's are intentionally neutered.

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  8. You've probably seen this thread:
    https://support.google.com/blogger/thread/2514304/not-able-to-take-backup-of-my-blog-after-35-mb-it-is-showing-failed-network-error-google-chrome?hl=en

    It reminded me of an incident where a network operation was failing, but when I did the same op from a different internet provider, it worked.
    This first network probably had a firewall setting, or network policy about file types, or any number of things.

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  9. Sadly I won't be of anymore help than many of your other responses. Mine is mainly just a comment. As I was reading thru the comments one theme kept coming thru, apparently your post was not read thoroughly. It was obvious that you were backing up your blog to your computer, not some media device, and that you can backup your files, to a media device, without any problem. With my limited computer knowledge, I would surmise that the issue is with the Blogger site its self, especially because you had this issue before. Or there is some corruption of your blog file. Either way, you are, sadly, at the mercy of Blogger. :(

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  10. Look at Crucial.com to update your memory & SSD, Solid Srate Drives external 2 TB, 4 TB. EVEN internal. There's an app to see if you could update your memory. Edgar

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  11. If this is still an is ... perhaps try another none chrome based browser, as your file tranfer may be pushing the download limits of the chrome download tool that is part of the chrome browers. perhaps try using firefox. just a thought. it doesn't seem to be file curruption, but more like a file count or size issue that chrome DL is failing on.

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  12. Please let us know when this gets resolved. Thanks.

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