chief_banana
Cadet
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2014
- Messages
- 4
I have a running FreeNAS system, some CIFS shares, and Windows clients on my network.
When adding the shares to Windows machines, I discovered a snag - FreeNAS doesn't index the files, and Windows won't allow unindexed folders into its Libraries.
Workarounds:
1) Tell Windows to relocate my documents, music, etc. folders to the NAS. This circumvents the Library restriction. However, each time I open the library, I'm warned that the lack of indexes is not optimal. (Irritating). Also, it's not clear to me whether this forces Windows to index the remote files, or not. Search usability will be low if there's no indexing.
2) Turn on 'available offline', (which caches the entire share locally), add it to library, then turn off the caching before local HDD gets filled up. (Still probably missing indexing/search performance)
3) There is a solution floating around the web whereby one uses mklink to connect a local directory to the share. The local indexing service will then actually index the files, thinking they're local. Each client will have to maintain their own index.
4) Connect a Windows server to the NAS shares, enable indexing on the server, then re-share from there. Downsides; probably performance, power usage.
5) Third party search tools on the client. Not as integrated as the Start Menu search and still doesn't make Windows happy about the non-indexed shares in its libraries.
Wish list:
5) FreeNAS native functionality or plugin. I don't see any though (?) This would be a fantastic option to have and the most logical implementation.
Just dealing with it:
6) Accepting the 'no index' warnings and doing with out search might be OK for the time being.
What do other Windows users running a FreeNAS do to deal with this? My solution will have a wife acceptance factor to contend with too. Thanks :)
When adding the shares to Windows machines, I discovered a snag - FreeNAS doesn't index the files, and Windows won't allow unindexed folders into its Libraries.
Workarounds:
1) Tell Windows to relocate my documents, music, etc. folders to the NAS. This circumvents the Library restriction. However, each time I open the library, I'm warned that the lack of indexes is not optimal. (Irritating). Also, it's not clear to me whether this forces Windows to index the remote files, or not. Search usability will be low if there's no indexing.
2) Turn on 'available offline', (which caches the entire share locally), add it to library, then turn off the caching before local HDD gets filled up. (Still probably missing indexing/search performance)
3) There is a solution floating around the web whereby one uses mklink to connect a local directory to the share. The local indexing service will then actually index the files, thinking they're local. Each client will have to maintain their own index.
4) Connect a Windows server to the NAS shares, enable indexing on the server, then re-share from there. Downsides; probably performance, power usage.
5) Third party search tools on the client. Not as integrated as the Start Menu search and still doesn't make Windows happy about the non-indexed shares in its libraries.
Wish list:
5) FreeNAS native functionality or plugin. I don't see any though (?) This would be a fantastic option to have and the most logical implementation.
Just dealing with it:
6) Accepting the 'no index' warnings and doing with out search might be OK for the time being.
What do other Windows users running a FreeNAS do to deal with this? My solution will have a wife acceptance factor to contend with too. Thanks :)