WinSCP extremely slow to open large directories

Hello,

I have let a directory size get way out of hand - it has tens of thousands of files and folders. I have been happily using winSCP for a while and this is the only area that it really stumbles.

Is there an option to disable the directory and file size calculations that occur whenever I open this folder? or perhaps its retrieving all those modified dates.

Either way it is just plain slow and if I can find a way to download the folders contents quicker, it would be ideal to handle this folder.

There's no size calculations taking place while opening a directory. Any change you having large number of symlink files in the directory? Because it would slow down the loading.

to be honest I don't know, as far as I know its basically a fairly standard web server setup.

By calculating size i'm referring to the status bar which will say something like "0B of 95,000 B in 0 of 4"

What I can tell you is that this particular folder contains perhaps 60,000 files and folders. It looks as though maybe its just the time taken to read the directory - would this be because it is retrieving the modified dates / the size of subfolders?

wheeler wrote:

would this be because it is retrieving the modified dates / the size of subfolders?

WinSCP does not retrieve size of subfolders.
But if there are symbolic links, WinSCP resolves them, what can slow down the directory listing significantly.

I've exactly the same problem with multiple folders containing several thousand files. Opening such a folder takes a few minutes which is annoying, especially because it's not possible to cancel or interrupt this operation. And as it's hard to figure out how many files are in a folder (without opening it) using WinSCP is unfortunately almost impracticable for me.

Is there any way to define time limits for certain operations? If not, I would like to request this. Even the possibility to cancel the operation might be a great help.

ferruccio wrote:

I've exactly the same problem with multiple folders containing several thousand files. Opening such a folder takes a few minutes which is annoying, especially because it's not possible to cancel or interrupt this operation. And as it's hard to figure out how many files are in a folder (without opening it) using WinSCP is unfortunately almost impracticable for me.

Is there any way to define time limits for certain operations? If not, I would like to request this. Even the possibility to cancel the operation might be a great help.

With SFTP protocol, you can cancel directory loading by pressing Esc. With SCP it is not possible due to technical reasons.

I'm uploading hundreds of thousands of product images for our online ecommerce cart and have 5 directories (original, large, small, and thumb) that each have 65,000 images each. Everytime I click one of these directories to upload new files it takes approx. 5 minutes before I can do anything and another 5 min once the files have uploaded. I've check for sym links and unchecked the option to resolve them and still it takes almost too long. Is this normal behavior? What can be done to speed it up?

Thank you,

-Jeremy Johnson

Switched to running winscp from the command line. It is litterally like night and day. No more waiting 5 minutes for directories to load in the GUI. No more waiting 5 minutes after files have uploaded to do anything else. I would highly recommend this for anyone uploading a large volume of images. I can run upload to all 5 directories at the same time with no wait. Here is a link to the script commands:

https://winscp.net/eng/docs/scriptcommand_rm

Enjoy!

I have the same issue, after some debug, I found that is a conflict with MSE(Microsoft Security Essentials).
then, after I disable MSE, everything is ok.

You can add exclude prcess in MSE if you don't want stop MSE.