Very slow indexing of SMB share on Windows

[hello-there]

Hello,

I'm moving from QNAP to TrueNAS.

I have a folder on my workstation PC with 15 000+ Excel files. I was "sharing" it to other local network workstations via QNAP Sync (a sync software that scans changes near "real-time" and also makes a backup copy on the NAS). Everything great so far. Searching for a word on the whole folder to find the exact Excel file was instant, thanks to Windows Indexing on the workstation (with SSDs on in).

Now, I'm moving to TrueNAS and decided to go to a different route - made a SMB share on the NAS, transferred the whole folder with huge amount of Excel files on it. Made an shortcut to in on my workstation PC.
TrueNAS is with 2xHDD mirror for data + 2xSSD mirror for Log, 32GB of RAM on which the ZFS ARC cache seems to did his job to accumulate all the ~3GB of the shared SMB folder.

The problem - when I try to search for a keyword on the shared SMB folder on my Windows workstation PC , the process takes ages... literally 10mins+
Tried searching for some kind of Indexing on the TrueNAS, but seems there is none. Found a program for Windows called "Everything", tried indexing the shared SMB folder, but there is again the same slowness for searching by keyword on the Windows Search....

So, I'm looking for a near-instant indexing solution for my type of shared folder... is there any, or I have to go again via the route of local folders and sync on the workstations via some kind of Plugin on the TrueNAS ?

Thank you for your time, dear reader.

 

[Samuel Tai]

There is currently no support for the Windows Search Protocol in Samba, which is the SMB server layer in TrueNAS. There are ongoing experiments to reverse-engineer the protocol from WireShark traces, starting from a 2015 proof of concept from SUSE (see https://sambaxp.org/archive-data-sa...1-Noel_Power-WindowSearchProtocolAndSamba.pdf).

Unfortunately, this results in the desktop having to crawl the network share in real time, and the slow performance you experience.

 

[Samuel Tai]

I don't know if this will work, but you could try enabling Offline folders for the SMB share; this will sync a copy of that folder to your PC. It may be that Windows Search will index the offline folder.