Synology – [Resolved] Failed to access the backup destination. (Only the owner of this backup task is allowed to perform backup.)

Recently, Synology added a new check to “Security Advisor” that would generate a warning if it found the default “admin” account still enabled. That is accompanied by a recommendation to create another equivalent account, log in using that account and disable the admin account. Doing so eliminates one of the attack vectors as the default admin account is known and commonly used in brute force attacks.

It’s a 5-minute job and I would highly recommend you do so if you haven’t already. However, depending on what you’re already using that account for, you could see a side-effect of it. In my case, my backup jobs (Hyper Backup) to another Synology appliance started failing:

Going to the “Detailed log” displayed the following error message:

Failed to access the backup destination. (Only the owner of this backup task is allowed to perform backup.)

Now, I wasn’t expecting that because I had already changed the username and password in the “Target” settings for the job. Given I couldn’t see any setting that allowed me to change the ownership of the job, it resulted in a bit of head-scratching,

So, I started to investigate the target Synology appliance where I found the solution to this issue. As the steps might not be immediately obvious to a new user, I have detailed the exact step-by-step process here which I hope will help.

Remember: All these steps need to be carried out on the “target” Synology appliance – and therefore, in “Hyper Backup Vault”:

Step 1: Open “Hyper Backup Vault” on the target Synology appliance and click on “All Task” in the left-hand pane.

Step 2: Click on the backup job you want to fix in the right-hand pane. That will result in a “File Station” window, showing the job’s “hbk” folder listed.

Step 3: Right-click on the job folder and on the resulting context menu, click on “Properties”

Step 4: In the resulting window, you will see the “Owner” setting with a drop-down menu. Pick the account you want to own the backup job, tick “Apply to this folder, sub-folders and files” and click “OK”.

Depending on the size of the job, it might take a while for it to reset everything but once finished, you will have successfully changed the owner of that job and fixed the issue. You can go back into the same window to verify the change.

To confirm all is fixed, I’d recommend triggering the same job from “Hyper Backup” on the “source” Synology again and this time around, it should run successfully and for the future too!

Hope this helps!