# Initial Folder Scan Behavior - Is this expected?
**URL:** https://forum.syncthing.net/t/initial-folder-scan-behavior-is-this-expected/15750
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [October 19, 2020, 8:38pm UTC](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/initial-folder-scan-behavior-is-this-expected/15750 "2020-10-19T20:38:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@IamSpartacus](https://forum.syncthing.net/u/IamSpartacus)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2020, 8:38pm UTC](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/initial-folder-scan-behavior-is-this-expected/15750/1 "2020-10-19T20:38:16Z")
From what I’m seeing from an initial scan of a very large folder (60TB+), the scanner is going through the file system and reading every single file one by one in it’s entirety. At this rate the initial scan will take 5+ days. Is this expected behavior? If so, will subsequent update scans be quicker after this initial scan?
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### Author:  [@imsodin](https://forum.syncthing.net/u/imsodin)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2020, 9:07pm UTC](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/initial-folder-scan-behavior-is-this-expected/15750/2 "2020-10-19T21:07:41Z")
Yes. On initial scan everything is new (“changed”) thus needs to be hashed. On subsequent ones only changed files will be be hashed again. See [https://docs.syncthing.net/users/syncing.html#scanning](https://docs.syncthing.net/users/syncing.html#scanning)
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### Author:  [@FreeBSD\_Lover](https://forum.syncthing.net/u/FreeBSD_Lover)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2020, 9:13pm UTC](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/initial-folder-scan-behavior-is-this-expected/15750/3 "2020-10-19T21:13:52Z")
> [@IamSpartacus](#):
>
> …will subsequent update scans be quicker after this initial scan?
As already answered yes. I got a few TB and that took a couple hours on my machines, but each file (changed or new) afterwards is a few seconds to scan. Note the options for each folder; “watch”, and periodic. You can enable/disable/tune those. I have a folder with a lot of large files that seldom change so I set that to scan every 6 hours, another with only a few dozen short lived small sized files I scan every minute, but turned off watching.
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### Author:  [@IamSpartacus](https://forum.syncthing.net/u/IamSpartacus)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2020, 4:54pm UTC](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/initial-folder-scan-behavior-is-this-expected/15750/4 "2020-10-21T16:54:37Z")
Thanks for the clarification on this.
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.syncthing.net/u/system)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2020, 4:54pm UTC](https://forum.syncthing.net/t/initial-folder-scan-behavior-is-this-expected/15750/5 "2020-11-20T16:54:44Z")
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