Not-your-average 'Slow Network Folder' question

[ECCOGuy]

I don't want someone to look at the title and go, "some ID10T don't know what he's doing". I really need some good help on this one. I have a network share 'jobs' that everyone maps to as drive K. Inside are about 30 folders and another 20 files. All work fine except one folder, 'mi-jobs'. This folder is inheriting the exact same permissions as the other folders. When you click on the folder, even a single-click, or even a right-click, it pauses for about 5 minutes before changing it to the select folder. I will warn you that this is no small folder. Inside it, there is about 70gb of data across 11k folders/subfolders and about 334k files. You would say, "That's your problem right there, fool!" But that's not it. If you navigate to it from the tree view (left pane) rather then clicking it on the folder view (the right pane) it opens in a matter of 2-3 seconds just fine!

I've googled the subject to death, and everything I find is general best practices to imporove overall performance of folder browsing. I even looked at the list of open files in Computer Management to see what's being touched in this 5 minute span. I did find a number of .ink files that pointed to nowhere or to the same directory that were being accessed, and removed those. Another tip I found was to check for desktop.ini files and so I removed the one that was located on the base folder (jobs). My only guess is that when you go through the folder view instead of the tree view it enumerates through the directory looking at something. But it doesn't seem to be actually touching anything. The majority of file types in the folder tree are: tre,dxf,var,dgn,efm (CAD type files); PDF,BAK,TXT,INI. Also, the Indexing Service on the server is not indexing anything on that logical drive.

Any help would be great!!!

Spencer
MCSE2k, MCSA2k, Net+, A+

 

[Roadki11]

Hi Spencer,

Sounds like a fun problem, not! I dont know if i have any good ideas for you but i have some ID10T ideas that you can either entertain or disregard as you see fit.

ID10T idea 1:
im guessing you are using NTFS on that drive, any chance my guess is wrong and you are for some reason using FAT32 with additional drives mounted as FAT32 subfolders? pretty sure this would cause problems.

ID10T idea 2:
any chance you have reserved names used for directory or file names, like COM1, LPT2, or NUL? I have seen users magically create such directory or file names through some bizzar key combination that i am yet to figure out or recreate.

ID10T idea 3:
I did some research on max file name length for NTFS. I couldnt find an exact answer(size) but it seems to be obscenely long. Thats a monster directory maybe a violation of the obscene?

ID10T idea 4:
I know this is a stretch but is this accessible via FTP? I worked on a server, think it was NT or 2k that got hacked and some really clever hidden directories created. Needless to say they were serving up about 15gig of Warez for public consumption.

Doubt any of these are your problem, just thought I would throw out a few out until a better idea comes along.

RoadKi11

 

[ECCOGuy]

Thanks for the reply:

1: There are only two volumes on the Server, and both are NTFS of course.

2: My users are a interesting bunch, I'll run some searches to see if any forbidden combinations are used.

3: Most of the folder and file names are 6-8 digit numbers, so I don't think it would be that issue; and I figure it would spit out an error if it was that case.

4. This last idea is a strech, but I inherited this network from someone that had no idea what they were doing (everyone had full control on almost everything. Plus individual rights were assigned on top of that. There were no groups at all!)...so anything is possible!

Thanks for the tips...Hopefully someone else will jump in with some more ideas!

Spencer
MCSE2k, MCSA2k, Net+, A+

 

[itsp1965]

Another possible issue is the length of your sub-directory paths. If you have a folder that has a deep directory tree, especially if you hit the 255 character mark, you will experience slow response since it has to attempt to enumerate all folders/files in the directory tree. I have seen this many times on folders smaller than yours, so compounding it by the fact that you 300K+ files, this could be one of your trouble spots.

 

[DTracy]

Working on the Server:

If you make a shortcut on the desktop of the Server that holds these files and click on it does it still take several minutes to open the folder?

Do the users have standard or roaming profiles?

 

[ECCOGuy]

-itsp1965
Thanks for your feedback, but Roadki11 asked a similar question #3. As I said with him, most are all 6-8 digit numbers, so the longest length path&file combo I found was still under 100 characters.

-DTracy
I hope you're on to something here. I did forget to mention this and you brought up a good point. Because my users are sick and tired of waiting for the file to open in exploder, they have shortcut to the exact same file on their desktop, and it works fine. I did the same on the server, as you advised, and it also works just fine & fast (just like when you navigate to it from the tree view in explorer). As far as profiles go, I have no roaming profiles at all in my domain.

Thanks for everyone's input so far!

Spencer
MCSE2k, MCSA2k, Net+, A+

 

[acl03]

What if you try making a copy of that directory and sharing it out as a test on another volume, or better yet, another server, just to see. If it works fine on another server, then you can at least tell that the folder structure is fine.



Thanks,
Andrew

 

[ECCOGuy]

I'll have to try that after hours, acl03. Thanks for the input. I guess if worst comes to worst and copying it works, I'll just have to approach it from that angle.

Spencer
MCSE2k, MCSA2k, Net+, A+