# File backups always silently fail when using Zero Downtime Deployment

**Project:** Sites | **Board:** Live | **Votes:** 13
**URL:** https://roadmap.ploi.io/projects/2-site-level-requests/items/494-file-backups-always-silently-fail-when-using-zero-downtime-deployment

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When a site has "Zero Downtime Deployment" enabled, any File Backups only back up the symlink, and not any actual site files. This can easily go unnoticed as no alert is issued, because the backup task thinks it has completed successfully.

_From support ticket #6303_

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## Comments

**Nathan Geerinck** (2023-06-14T07:28:57+00:00):
**Merged Backups: temporary files not deleted on fail into this item** 

 Created by: Nathan Geerinck 

 When a backup of a database fails, temporary files are not deleted.

Needs extra investigation: 
- Sites with Zero Downtime Deployments;
- Large SQL files;

**Dennis** (2024-11-20T16:17:53+00:00):
The fix for this, is still coming. For now, the bypass is rather easy, change your backup path from:

`/home/ploi/example.com` 

to:

`/home/ploi/example.com-deploy`

Note the appended **-deploy**.

**Daniel** (2025-05-07T15:35:33+00:00):
Any update on this?

**Daniel** (2025-05-07T17:55:12+00:00):
[@Dennis](/user/Dennis) maybe the following script can help
```
        if (is_link($this->webPath)) {
            $realPath = realpath($this->webPath);

            if (!$realPath || !is_dir($realPath)) {
                throw new \Exception("Symlink wijst niet naar geldige map: {$this->webPath}");
            }

            $sourcePath = $realPath;
        } else {
            $sourcePath = $this->webPath;
        }
```

**Lukas** (2025-06-28T20:08:18+00:00):
with suffix -deploy "Exclude folders/files" not work correctly