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Forum Discussion
MacOS directories incomplete
My network is small with only Macs connected. It accesses the ReadyNAS via SMB. One directory has about 16K files and/or folders. Often when I open this directory only some of the folders show up in Mac's Finder and the total Size is completely wrong, often showing more space than the 4 hard drives in the NAS have.
Usually I have to disconnect from the server altogether and then reconnect to get the file list to display properly. Although sometimes just moving to another location (like on a local Mac) and then returning to the NAS will make the file list display properly.
How can I fix this problem?
Thank you.
31 Replies
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I have no solution, but would consider the following:
As only macs are on your network, why not using AFP instead of SMB services for workstation to nas communication. As the macs would be "native speakers" in that environment, things might be easier. In the end you might be able to get rid of SMB completely.
Retired_Member wrote:
As only macs are on your network, why not using AFP instead of SMB services for workstation to nas communication.
This will work now, though it is important to note that Apple has deprecated AFP - so it might not work in the long term.
Blues11 wrote:
One directory has about 16K files and/or folders. Often when I open this directory only some of the folders show up in Mac's Finder and the total Size is completely wrong, often showing more space than the 4 hard drives in the NAS have.
What firmware are you running? I recall seeing this issue quite a while ago, but I haven't seen a recent report.
Yes, with Apple moving away from AFP there is specific functionality that will only work using SMB.
I'm running the latest firmware, 6.9.3.
What's strange is that the directory will sometimes display all of the folders and other times it will display just a random quantity. After a while (sometimes 20 or 30 minutes, sometimes a few minutes) the entire directory will be displayed.
It's just so unnerving to try to scroll to a directory and it seemingly doesn't exist.
Hi Blues11
OS 6.8 made an enhancement on the SMB protocol for MacOS users.
The issue might be with the loading of directories with large amount of files. Since you are on OS 6.9.3 have you tried enabling this enhancement?
Hope this helps!
Regards
It's been a while and I came to check if there was a solution to the problem. I have the time because I created a directory and copied some files to it, but when I moved to the higher level folder the directory I just created is not there. It's been about fifteen minutes and I was hoping it would show up by now (along with perhaps four or five hundred other directories in that folder), but so far no luck. Maybe another ten or twenty minutes and the directory listing will be accurate.
Also, I thought I had replied to the earlier message, but I see that I may not have. However, I did enable the enhanced SMB several months ago. It didn't seem to do anything to fix this problem.
Thank you.
If you've read this thread, you'll see that I’ve had an ongoing issue with my all-Mac network. Very frequently the listing for a 2.7TB directory on a 4.25TB share is not accurate when first displayed. It may take anywhere from seconds to even five or more minutes for the directory to magically refresh itself with complete information and display all the directories.
Several people have responded with suggestions that I’ve tried but nothing seems to have worked. One post implied that the directory might simply be too large for the combination of MacOS and the Netgear Firmware to handle.
So, I’m wondering if converting that one directory to be a separate share might ameliorate the problem.
Any input on this would be helpful.
Then, if I decide to make the change, how do I convert a subdirectory on a share to become a new share?
Thanks for any input.
I'd think that the issue would more likely related to the way the files/folders are organized. Folders or subfolders that have a lot of files will have slower browsing than smaller folders. For example, if you had 100 folders of 100 files each , you'd get faster performance than 10000 files in the main folder. So maybe look at that?
Blues11 wrote:
Then, if I decide to make the change, how do I convert a subdirectory on a share to become a new share?
There's no way to directly convert it. You need to create the share, copy the subdirectory to it, and then delete it in the source share.
If you are using ssh for the copying, then you can use the --reflink option to speed up the copying. Note that each share is it's own btrfs subvolume, so moving files will take about the same time as copy/delete (unless you use --reflink).
Thanks for the quick reply.
The large subdirectory has about 1,400 folders. In each directory there are generally fewer than 10 or 15 files, one or two of which are in the range of a GB. Do you think dividing that directory into two would have a beneficial effect?
Given that the server has 5TB free, would there be a problem with copying 2.7TB to that space, leaving only 2.3TB free? Of course, once it would be completed the original 2.7TB would be deleted, but would that be too much stress on it?
Once again, thank you.
All those who contrbuted to this topic were very helpful. I simply want to provide some follow-up information.
After going through the learning curve (and pains) of moving my large directory (~2TB) out of an even larger existing one (~4.5TB), I successfully created it as a separate share.
Unfortunately, it did not solve the original problem. Occasionally I still get the problem where the directory listing (in Finder; all the computers connected on the LAN are Macs) populates with only a portion of the complete list of items. FYI, there are ~1450 directories and ~20000 items total. Then, after anywhere from 2 to 20 minutes, the rest of the items shows up. Sometimes I can create a new directory, go off to do another task for a minute or so, return to the listing and find the new directory is not there. When that happens the only solution is to wait several minutes until the complete directory listing happens.
Still, I have learned some new things about moving to a new share, deleting large amounts of data, etc. You have been helpful and I appreciate the assistance I received. Perhaps, a newer release of the OS will solve this annoying issue.
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