I have a fairly large folder I want to sync once a month or so as a backup. Every time I turn on syncthing the scan cripples the primary system due to the scanning. It’s not a weak system either with 36 CPU cores and 256GB RAM. So I want to be able to pause the folder to stop the scan while everyone is awake so they can use the other services I’m running, and then unpause it when I go to bed. Every time I do this the scan starts from the beginning again which means I’ll never be able to back up the folder. The scan can get about 5% of the folder over night, so I’d probably need 3-4 weeks to complete the scan. I think if I delete all the content in the folder it would take similarly as long to sync AND I’d have the added benefit of not having the crippling scan. Is there a better way than having to delete the folder and resync it each time?
It’s possible files that were previously scanned have changed again since Syncthing was paused so restarting the scan is a good thing.
The number of CPU cores and RAM are great, but there are a lot of unknowns including:
- How many files are in that “fairly large folder”?
- OS?
- Filesystem?
- Storage hardware?
Check out the configuration tuning page for tips on optimizing performance under various scenarios.
It doesn’t, though. It does restart from where it was last. It’s just that the progress indicator is based on what it has left to scan.