Suggest using NTFS MFT to speed up folder comparison time

Discuss new features and functions
Posts: 2
Joined: 28 Feb 2020

hjkou

I've been using the FreeFileSync for quite some time on the Windows platform and it really helped me a lot to maintain the backups of my documents! Many thanks to the developers! As the time goes and the number of files to be synchronized is getting bigger and bigger so that it takes more than 10 minutes before it collects all the information on what to be synchronized each time. It seems the FFS is collecting the information thru the regular file system interface, which is painfully slow on large folders.

I know there are other tools such as Everything and NTFS-Search that can read the information of the files thru the NTFS MFT (Master File Table) to speed up the process in seconds! The NTFS-Search is open source. Suggest FFS could leverage the NTFS MFT to speed up the folder comparison time. Hope FFS is getting better and better!
Posts: 2
Joined: 26 Sep 2020

hourglass

I second that. It also makes freefilesync unusable for me for daily sync between two machines.
Using the NTFS table +the ability to get the file list remotely using a server (to read the NTFS journal remotely) would really expand the usefulness of the software in that scenario.
Posts: 6
Joined: 2 Apr 2021

debiedowner

Reading the MFT makes a massive difference. I moved from WinDirStat to WizTree for that reason: What used to take minutes now takes seconds; it's near instant, really.

I know that FreeFileSync is a cross-platform program and this enhancement would be mostly useful for Windows users, but it makes such a big difference that I hope that it is still implemented one day. Though macOS and Linux users can also use NTFS, and I also wonder if APFS or ext4 has a similar feature.
Posts: 1
Joined: 6 May 2020

Volkerchen

Reading the MFT makes a massive difference.
FACK!

Since I installed "Everything", searching with my favourite file manager (Totalcommander) no longer takes several minutes, but only the blink of an eye.

FreeFileSync would probably also benefit from an integration of the NTFS Master File Table.