Best Way to Back up Music Library

[DavidHB]

I've been doing some web searching, and I think that Simon is correct; the folders originated on the Synology. The "ea" bit apparently stands for "extended attributes".

I can easily see how folders which are hidden on the Synology could become visible on the QNAP, especially if their hidden status is in any way dependent in the extended attributes they contain. For its part, SyncToy, in the settings you are using is copying files with all attributes, and the Synology has probably hidden its own copies of the "@ea" folders from SMB/Windows and therefore from SyncToy.

In the circumstances, I would delete these folders from the QNAP, where they apparently do not belong, before synchronising with the Synology. For future runs of any SyncToy echo task with the Synology as left folder, I would set an exclude mask in the task properties, so that these files are not copied, and I would also exclude hidden files from the task. Both these things are easy to set in the options dialog.

Unfortunately, problems of this kind will be an issue with any file synchronisation program. But at least you can see that the caution with which you approached the task was entirely justified.

David