Syncthing-fork: Nearly 4000 items not syncing, no obvious error message

I have syncthing for Windows setup on a laptop PC, and syncthing-fork setup on a Google Pixel 8. I used to have an older android device with a similar setup; I recreated the folders as I began to transition to the new Pixel 8 device, using syncthing to transfer my files over.

One of these folders is a large image/video gallery containing 42,659 files, totaling at 57.9 GB’s. According to the GUI page on the Windows PC, there are 3903 files(3.92 GB’s) that have yet to sync. These files are reported to all be last modified by the PC. Their modified dates are all over the place from the last 5 years or so. I have tried removing and re-creating the folders twice now, but syncthing continues to get stuck on these specific 3903 files. I have also tried copying the files over manually, but 1. I cant find pattern that groups these files together so I can copy them alone, and 2. USB file transfer from Windows to Android through Windows explorer leaves a lot to be desired. I have already ran into issues trying to copy the gallery in its entirety, and I’m too concerned with the possibility of data loss to try it again.

I have other sync folders setup between these two devices that are working normally. I can even add new images/videos to the gallery that is having issues, and they will be added/synced correctly.

I do not know what log files would be useful to post. I enabled fs and scanner debugging, but do not immediately see anything relevant to the gallery folder. Also, the gallery is of an adult nature and I do not want to be posting file names publicly in a log file. It it quite frankly embarrassing. I apologize in advance for not having more information; I didn’t see a FAQ page about what information is generally helpful for support threads. I am also not sure if this was a correct place to post, considering I am using syncthing-fork.

Hi @rtaa37 !

My guess is that there are “illegal” characters in the filename of these files. Turn your attention to one of them and identify characters which might be troublesome. Remove one such character at a time and see if it gets transferred. Good luck!

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There should be an error for each file in the web GUI under “failed items”, after it’s tried to sync them. (Though maybe not visible while a sync attempt is ongoing.) The error message may be a hint. My first guess would be what @martinleben suggests, except, if the files are coming from Windows they should probably already be under the same naming restrictions…

My guess is that there are “illegal” characters in the filename of these files. Turn your attention to one of them and identify characters which might be troublesome. Remove one such character at a time and see if it gets transferred. Good luck!

I downloaded Bulk Rename Utility and checked the option to remove all ASCII characters past 127. It did not find any results in my image gallery that contained such characters. Majority of the images come from booru sites that use standardized, hashed file names, so its unlikely that any of these would contain illegal characters. There was a more recent download from a non-standard naming site, but if it had illegal characters in the names, BRU did not find them. I see some of those recent files are included in the out-of-sync files, but I don’t see any illegal characters in them.

There should be an error for each file in the web GUI under “failed items”, after it’s tried to sync them. (Though maybe not visible while a sync attempt is ongoing.)

Pretty sure that is what is happening. The sync is in progress, but nothing is ever reported for the 3903 files. Aside from them showing up as out of sync. Forgot to mention in the OP, but it took several weeks for the majority of the files to transfer. I expected it to take awhile, having read about the file system limitations on Android. So it took me a bit to notice the lack of progress on these remaining files. I’ve been sitting with these remaining, out-of-sync files for months now.

EDIT: I have never seen a “Failed Items” dialog, would that only show up if there were failed items to begin with? Otherwise, where would I find that in the web GUI?

Here is one example: Failed items

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