Ubuntu Version:
Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS
Desktop Environment (if applicable):
Not a GUI related problem
Problem Description:
Dear all,
I’m having a serious problem while using rsync and I can’t tell if I’ve been unlucky enough to found two Kingston USB pens (both are “DT Micro DTMC3G2” formatted FAT32) that are defective in the same way or rsync has something to do with it.
I bought two USB pens, one should be my digital archive and the other its backup (both are formatted FAT32 and protected using BitLocker). I used to backup a couple of times a month the first one on the second one using this script:
--------- my_backup ----------
#!/usr/bin/bash
rsync -aAXv "$1" --exclude={"*no_bak*",".Trash-1000","System Volume Information"} --delete-excluded "$2"
I call this script using the following script:
#!/usr/bin/bash
./my_backup /media/max/ARC/ /media/max/ARC_BAK > $0.log 2>&1
For some months everything worked perfectly then a couple of weeks ago I had a bunch of errors such as:
rsync: [receiver] rename "/media/max/ARC_BAK/10 - Auto/10 - Bolli/.2018-2019.pdf.TpzbgR" -> "10 - Auto/10 - Bolli/2018-2019.pdf": No such file or directory (2)`
Since then the USB pen is dead. I plugged it into several PC (both Linux and Windows) but they don’t react in any way. I got in touch with Kingston support and they sent me a new USB pen.
Today I received the new USB pen.This pen was already formatted FAT32, I protected the new USB pen through BitLocker, using my office Windows PC, and when at home I ran the above script to backup my archive on the new pen.
After a couple of seconds I started having the same error messages and today again the USB pen got broken exactly as the first one: I can plug it in any PC but they don’t react in any way, no USB device is detected.
I’ve made a search on Google to see if there are known bugs in sync that could explain this behavior but didn’t find anything. I had a look at release notes archived on https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/NEWS but apparently the sync version I’m using is not reported to have such a problem.
It seems quite strange to me that a SW bug could cause a pen to die this way but it also sounds strange to me that two Kingston USB pens have the same problem.
Actually… when I plug in the USB pen something happens, there a line that appears in /dev/disk/by-id:
max@ASUS-V221IC:~$ ls /dev/disk/by-id/usb*
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-13FE_USB_DISK_50X-0:0
however:
max@ASUS-V221IC:~$ sudo dosfsck -v /dev/disk/by-id/usb-13FE_USB_DISK_50X-0:0
fsck.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
open: No medium found
Does anybody have any idea about what’s happening and what I could do to solve this issue?
Thanks.
Relevant System Information:
Here are some information on my Linux PC:
HW: https://www.asus.com/supportonly/v221ic/helpdesk/
max@ASUS-V221IC:~$ rsync --version
rsync version 3.2.7 protocol version 31
Copyright (C) 1996-2022 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
Web site: `[`https://rsync.samba.org/`](https://rsync.samba.org/)
Capabilities:
64-bit files, 64-bit inums, 64-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints,
socketpairs, symlinks, symtimes, hardlinks, hardlink-specials,
hardlink-symlinks, IPv6, atimes, batchfiles, inplace, append, ACLs,
xattrs, optional secluded-args, iconv, prealloc, stop-at, no crtimes
Optimizations:
SIMD-roll, no asm-roll, openssl-crypto, no asm-MD5
Checksum list:
xxh128 xxh3 xxh64 (xxhash) md5 md4 sha1 none
Compress list:
zstd lz4 zlibx zlib none
Daemon auth list:
sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 md4
rsync comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you
are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. See the GNU
General Public Licence for details.
max@ASUS-V221IC:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS
Release: 24.04
Codename: noble
max@ASUS-V221IC:~$ uname -a
Linux ASUS-V221IC 6.8.0-117-lowlatency #117.1-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed May 6 20:10:37 UTC 2026 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
max@ASUS-V221IC:~$ uname -a
Linux ASUS-V221IC 6.8.0-117-lowlatency #117.1-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed May 6 20:10:37 UTC 2026 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Screenshots or Error Messages:
See above.
What I’ve Tried:
See above
Ciao,
Max
