Slow loading for folders with a lot of files (Windows 11 smb)

[CapserNie]

Hello, I'm new to unraid, just migrated from OMV and want to know if this is expected behavior.

I have a large folder with over 4000 subfolders, going in and out of the folder has been a terrible experience so far. The browser behavior is very different from OMV, in OMV, if I haven't opened the folder for a while, it might take a few seconds to load, but once it opens, it will immediately display everything in the folder, and when i go into one of the subfolders and come back, everything will load immediately without any delay. I guess the folder structure was cached somewhere so that it doesn't have to load again. 

In unraid, things are very different, first of all, the large folder will take ~1 second to open, once it opens, it will not display all the files, I noticed that it always starts with showing the exact same couple of hundreds of files, and then it starts to load, the little circle on the top left corner of windows explorer starts to run, and the number of items indicator on the bottom left corner gradually increases. Finally all the files will show up after ~5 seconds, what's worse, every time I go into one of the subfolders and move back, I have to endure the same loading process again, as if nothing was "cached", you can imagine ~5 seconds wait time for every other action is a frustrating experience. 

I searched online and tried installing dynamix cache dir, it didn't help.

Can anyone help answer

1. Why does it always starts with showing the exact same bunch of files when the folder opens, is it because for some reason only these ones are cached, or, they are on one of the disks and this disk got preferential treatment so files in it always show up first? 

2. Why is folder structure not cached and everything have to load again when i go in and out of the folder?

3. How to remedy this problem?

(I noticed this only happens with this 1 folder with thousands of files, other smaller folders with a couple hundreds of files seem to load instantly, is there an upper limit for the amount of subfolders that unraid can cache?)

Thank you in advance!

Edited April 10, 2024 by CapserNie

[JorgeB]

If you can move that share to a pool try using an exclusive share, it should perform much better, or keep it in a single disk in the array, and then use a disk share to access it, both will bypass FUSE, it can cause a big performance penalty when there are a lot of files.