Carbon Copy Cloner Error “Listing the contents of this folder“

[Makisupa Policeman]

Lately when performing automated backups with CCC I’m getting an error message that says it cannot “list the contents of a folder.”

Is this the same as a read/write error, and is it an indication of file corruption or media failure? Here are some examples of the errors I’ve received lately:

“The backup task completed, but CCC encountered errors while transferring some files.

Open CCC's Task History window to get more information about the affected items.”

Listing the contents of this folder (source): /System/Volumes/Data/Users/****/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/resources/derivatives/0

Listing the contents of this folder (source): /System/Volumes/Data/Users/****/Library/Saved Application State

Listing the contents of this folder (source): /System/Volumes/Data/private/var/db/locationd/Library/ContainerManager

 

[Fishrrman]

Could it be one (or more) corrupted files WITHIN your [home] folder...?

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

It’s possible. I am also backing up thru a USB dock connection (so it’s not directly plugged in). could that cause any issues reading files?

What’s interesting is when i ran backup health check in CCC all files on the source and backup destination were readable and matched MD5 checksums according to CCC. So I’m not sure why this error keeps popping up if it’s not reporting any corruption when it reads from the entire drive.

Just for sanity I did first aid on the disk (error code was 0) and also reinstalled macOS in case it was a software issue.

However if the issue persists I’m guessing I’d have to reformat and restore from backup? Just seems weird that it’s only showing up during incremental backups when random modified files are accessed.

 

[Makisupa Policeman]

So far so good. Since running first aid and reinstalling macOS I haven’t had the issue again. I also deleted some files that were likely corrupted (there wasn’t a need to reinstall them because they were application state files from apps I no longer was using). Hopefully the issue doesn’t persist.