NFS Share Backup Transfers No Data

Product version: 11.2

Last modified: 05 January 2026

Problem

A file share backup job for an NFS share completes with a Success status, but no data is transferred to the backup repository. The job report shows 0 B transferred, and no critical errors are reported. This issue may occur intermittently and can be misleading, as the backup job appears successful while no backup data is actually created.

Background

This behavior is caused by instability in the Windows NFS client, not by the NAKIVO Transporter.

On Windows systems, listing folders and opening a specific path are separate operations. When accessing NFS shares, Windows may successfully enumerate a directory but fail to resolve or open the same path shortly. This can result in ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND, even though the directory exists and was just enumerated.

As a result, the backup process may skip all source data without triggering a Transporter-level failure, allowing the job to complete with a Success status but without transferring any data.

Solution

Because this is a Windows NFS client issue, the following workarounds are recommended:

  1. Change the network provider order and disable the DFS client so that the client for NFS Network provider is tried first. Apply the official Microsoft/Oracle recommendations for Windows NFS client issues.

  2. Re-run the backup job. Since the issue is intermittent, subsequent runs often complete successfully, transferring the data.

  3. Ensure that the NFS share is fully mounted and accessible before the backup job starts. Avoid running multiple file share backup jobs against the same NFS source simultaneously.