Proton Drive camera backup skips big files

NeatNit, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Unrelated to that, I think I’ve found a bug: every once in a while, the process stops, complains about low device storage and I have to push “retry” - after which it keeps going. It seems like the app doesn’t clear its temporary files until it fails due to low storage. I can see the app’s size growing and growing to over 50GB - which at the moment is all the free space I have - and then, when it hits the wall, suddenly shrink back to 144MB. The largest single file in the Camera folder is 17GB. Then I have to open the app manually and tell it to retry. This means I have to babysit it and can’t have it back up everything overnight.

Edit: app version is: Proton Drive 2.3.1. Phone is Samsung Galaxy S22+, OneUI 6.0, Android 15

Another edit: I am now seeing this happen while the app should be idle! Its storage usage just keeps climbing and climbing.

NeatNit, 1 month ago

Here’s some screenshots:

https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/dcb17190-a26a-4e64-a794-f85eed69721b.jpeg

… later …

https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/093c2991-7e6e-4b25-a698-7a8de0099ea6.jpeg

https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/63eef837-b72e-4a24-9e7f-6e5c5c83316f.jpeg

then:

https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/741dc949-6d7a-4803-b8fa-4a525dda4ece.jpeg

https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/52aef51b-00ae-461a-b134-c82ff0852df2.jpeg

https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/cb943960-19d0-49d6-80c4-31988e9692ff.jpeg

naeap, 1 month ago

It probably needs some space to compress/archive the files to transmit and not just send them as they are. At least that could be an explanation why local device storage is needed - and it seems you’re running petty low on that

NeatNit, 1 month ago

It doesn’t need 3x the size of the biggest file it needs to compress.

BearOfaTime, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

And you know that how?

Many moons ago, working with command-line compression tools, they definitely needed 2.5x+ working space to compress things.

Android needs some free space to function. 99% full? Hahah, you’re kidding, right? Nothing will work right when storage is that full, with pretty much any OS.

NeatNit, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

99% full was when Proton Drive was using all the storage it could before it gave up. Half the reason I want to use Proton Drive is to free up storage space on my phone.

Edit: and factually it works if I just tell it to retry (until the next time it runs out of space) so any excuse you make for it is nonsense. I hope Proton support/devs would take this more seriously than that.

alex_herrero, 1 month ago

Please be respectful of other user’s comments, even if they don’t share your perspective. We don’t allow that kind of vocabulary around here.

Thanks!

NeatNit, 1 month ago

Fair enough, I changed the offensive word. You should probably take a look at how BearOfaTime basically implied I’m an idiot.

naeap, 1 month ago

Maybe it does some parallelization?
But yeah, that should be enough storage

NeatNit, 1 month ago

Thanks. Maybe it does, but as you say that still doesn’t explain it and it should still have ample space. Most of the files are photos or very short videos, and it’s definitely uploading them in order. It wouldn’t parallelize more than, say, 5 at a time. As my OP says it completely skips the biggest videos, so it has a cutoff of (I’m estimating) 5GB or so? So at worst it’s going to deal with two 5GB videos and 3 relatively tiny photos/videos simultaneously. 55GB is plenty for this scenario.

Also, this doesn’t mean much but it doesn’t feel like it’s parallelized. I think it’s just doing them sequentially. Just my hunch though, nothing conclusive.