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Speed up directory listing on Windows network share

Speed up directory listing on Windows network share

I'm using software that regularly scans thousands of files (probably the name and modification time). This takes quite a while since the files are accessed via a network share. Both machines run Windows XP SP3. Are there any simple, reliable tweaks to speed up the directory scan?

Asked by: Guest | Views: 289
Total answers/comments: 2
Guest [Entry]

"If you're working with directories that contain hundreds or thousands of files or subdirectories (or even a couple dozen files per directory, all with similar names), you're probably running into collisions with the 8.3 DOS-compatible filenames. There is a Microsoft KB article with instructions on how to improve directory enumeration performance by disabling 8.3 filename creation.

You can also disable the Last Accessed timestamp to improve performance. There's a small chance this may cause problems with other programs, but if you do notice problems you can easily re-enable the Last Accessed timestamp.

You may be able to get away with applying these changes to just the machine that's hosting the network share, but you could apply the changes on both machines just to be safe.

If you're running an antivirus program on both machines, you should also try disabling on-access scanning temporarily on both machines to see if that improves performance. In my experience, McAfee antivirus causes an insane performance hit every time you touch a file, but some other antivirus apps (such as CA and Avast) don't seem to have as severe a performance hit, even with on-access scanning enabled. Most antivirus programs allow you to specify directories to exclude from on-access scanning."
Guest [Entry]

"Accessing files over the wire is always going to be slower than if you access a local disk. You might be able to increase the performance of the scan if you set it up to run the scan locally. Whenever you start pulling files across the wire you will start noticing these types of slowdowns due to the number of files being accessed.

If you run the same scan remotely it will have to setup the connection to transfer/access each file which is why it is probably so slow.

It is possible to tweak the protocol you are using to access the files, but you will see much more dramatic results just moving the process to a local scan versus a network scan.

Something to note here, many enterprise class backup solutions also include a locally installed component that serves this very same purpose. The files can be transferred in a push versus a pull across the network which is a significant improvement."