Performance Problems: Listing big directories in Vault stored on NAS

[Allaboutzurich]

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Summary

It takes forever to open a Cryptomator Folder / Drive on Windows 11 2H22

What software is involved?

• Operating System: Windows 11 Pro (2H22) / Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8650U CPU @ 1.90GHz 2.11 GHz / 64-Bit
• Cryptomator: 1.6.14 (msi-3947)
• Synology NAS (Where the data is stored)

Volume Type

Dokany

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open and unlock Cryptomator Vault
2. Open a folder of your choice in your unlocked Vault
3. The more file you have in the folder, the longer it takes. (Windows Explorer will eventually give you the "No respond" Feedback)

Expected Behavior

Opening a folder in your vault was smooth and fast with close to no time delay.

Actual Behavior

If I open a folder in my vault now, it takes ages just to load an overview of the folders. If I open a folder to display its content, it takes ages to load the content. I noticed that the time varies according to the amount of content in the folder. (more number of items than the size of the files)

Reproducibility

Always

Relevant Log Output

No response

Anything else?

No response

[overheadhunter]

How does this behaviour change when you choose a different volume type?

By the way: We're currently working on a new implementation that will support "read dir plus" when using FUSE/WinFSP, which has the potential of reducing the amount of I/O calls during a dir listing significantly.

[Allaboutzurich]

Thanks for the update and good question.

I just copied the content to a cryptomator folder on my local drive.
On my local cryptomator folder I have the smooth experience I had on my NAS cryptomator folder before the update - so no issue there.

I have no lag or delay accessing the files on my nas which are not in a cryptomator folder and I had no lag before the windows update (as already mentioned).

Should I try something else?

[overheadhunter]

Should I try something else?

I don't know if this is related, but we got a report from some other user regarding slow loading of directory contents with non-local files stored on OneDrive. During the discussion we concluded that somehow Windows 11 wants to load thumbnails more eagerly, causing access to file contents and not just metadata.

This changed from Windows 10 and we don't know yet how we can convince Windows to be a little more lazy. One option (not yet confirmed) might be to tell Windows that the mounted volume is a "network drive", which can be done by adding custom mount flag. See my last comment here: #2341 (comment)

[Allaboutzurich]

Thanks for your comment, I just tried this.

So you mean I add this line -oVolumePrefix=W:/Cryptomator/Dokumente to this string --options CURRENT_SESSION --thread-count 5 --timeout 10000 --allocation-unit-size 4096 --sector-size 4096 which should look like this in the end?
--options CURRENT_SESSION --thread-count 5 --timeout 10000 --allocation-unit-size 4096 --sector-size 4096 -oVolumePrefix=W:/Cryptomator/Dokumente

If so, there is something wrong. Because I got an error message.

[overheadhunter]

Oh sorry, two mistakes:

1. this only works with FUSE, so you need to install WinFSP and change the volume type
2. remove the W:. Otherwise it looks fine 😉

Edit: One caveat: When you switch to FUSE, don't copy and paste the complete options string. FUSE options are different.

[Allaboutzurich]

Alright, so It looks like I have WinFSP already installed.

So if I understood you correctly, I just have to change the volume type by selecting it in the cryptomator settings under "Vault settings", Volume Type from Dokany to FUSE. Right?

Do I only have to add the string -oVolumePrefix=/Cryptomator/Dokumente to it?

[Allaboutzurich]

I just changed it and it works smooth again on my non-local file storage. That solved my issue.

Thank you very much for your support.

I'll close the ticket, if you have nothing to add to it.
Thanks again.

[overheadhunter]

Just to confirm: did switching to FUSE do the trick? Or did you need to add the mount flag as well?

Asking because this kind of issue is new to us as well.

[Allaboutzurich]

It was the latter.

First I did like you suggested, switching to FUSE and and adding the mount flag, and it worked like a charme.
Then, after your question, I tried to remove the mount flag and it lagged again.

So it was definitely the mount flag that did the job.

[overheadhunter]

Great, thanks for verifying this. This may help us to solve it for others as well!

Please leave this issue open. We will discuss if we consider this "fixed" or if there is something we can change in Cryptomator regarding this mount flag.