This post is continuously updated.
There are various ways to speed up building the file listing.
- Use at least version 7.20, which can generate a fast, multi-threaded file listing. If necessary, you can increase the number of folder scanning threads on the Performance tab sheet on the Program Settings dialog, or on the Job tab sheet in the profile.
- Make sure you haven’t chosen “Binary Comparison” on the tab sheet Comparison->More.
- Make sure you don’t use any unncessary logging. Especially “With Timing Info” or “File List Building Details” or “Internet Protocol Logging” dramatically slow down the listing process.
- If you are using “Process Security and Shares” on the Special tab sheet, consider whether you need the checkboxes “Update existing files” because that will be slow. If you must update existing items, make sure the setting is “Update Existing Items: Folders (and files will inherit)”.
- If you are using FTP, you can choose the recursive FTP Listing Command LIST -alR on the second tab sheet of the Internet dialog. If you are using SSH/SFTP and the server is a Linux/Unix type of server, you can try the “Recursive Listing” checkmark.
- You can install the Syncovery Remote Service on the other computer to generate the file list remotely. The Remote Service is available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Mac.
- If you have a one-way sync and you are just mirroring or backing up, you may be able to use the option “Cache Destination File List” from the Special tab sheet. However this option means that any changes on the destination by another person or program are not seen by the software, because it always remembers the last state in its cache and never looks at the destination folders again.
- You can use Real Time Synchronization which simply copies new and changed files rather than comparing the two folder structures. However, it is recommended to also schedule a full run regularly to catch any files that may have been missed in real time. Also, Real Time changes are only detected on local drives and via LAN or VPN. Changes are not detected via FTP, WebDAV and so forth (except see the new polling feature in Syncovery 9). Some computers or network devices may not be sending real-time notifications over the LAN.
- If you only need to copy new and modified files to the destination and never delete any files from the destination, you could turn off scanning the destination completely (on the Files tab sheet), and under General Filters, use the two Archive Flag checkmarks (or on macOS/Linux: “use extended attributes to mark files as copied”). On the first run, this will mean copying all files because the Archive flags are still set for all files. You can avoid that by adding a fixed date/time filter such as Date later than XX/YY/ZZZZ.
- If the Archive Flags cannot be used, you could still turn off scanning the destination and use a File Age filter such as “less than 1 days” old.