I istalled Syncthing on several PC with success. So far, so good. However on one PC, it tells me it is scanning the files each time the PC is started. This results in about 90% of disk usage. The scan needs about 5 hours. I think this is too much, although there are more than 1 millon files to scan. Is this behavior normal? Does it need that much time? I am concerned about the lifetime of that hard disc…
Probably yes, assuming that you’ve got a very large number of files located on spinning disks. How often do you restart the PC? In this kind of a situation, it would probably be much more efficient to keep the PC running 24/7, make sure that file watching is enabled, and then set the rescan interval to something like once per week.
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yes, it is a hard disk, no sdd. It seems I have to accept it. I am using this device about two times a day. But normally less than 5 hours. I did not find out, if the scanning is interrupted, if it start from the beginning or just continues. My rescan interval is currently 20 hours.
Is the database also located on the same HDD? If yes, then that can have a massive negative impact on the Syncthing’s performance.
Please also keep in mind that nothing will get synced until the scanning has finished.
I am sorry, i do not understand. Syncthing does syncronize between two different PC. Which database you mean?
Yes. Two or more. PC:s or other types of devices.
However, until the “Scanning” phase is completed, Syncthing is not actually performing any synchronisation.
Syncthing on each of your devices has a database where it keeps data needed to do its job.
Summary: You have quite a lot of files on spinning hard drives and the Syncthing database is probably also on those same drives, so it is expected that the initial scan will take quite some time because spinning drives are quite slow. Just be patient and they should start syncing soon, or maybe they have started already?
Got it. Yes it does synchronize. How can i move the database to another disk? If this really does improve the performance. Thanks
Honestly, it’s difficult to say anything concrete with no details about the current setup (e.g. the hardware, operating system, etc.), but usually, the recommendation would be to install the OS with other software, including Syncthing, on a separate SSD, and use the HDD for storage only.
Moving just the database is of course possible, but you really should know what you’re doing, as this has to be done with command line switches (see the Docs).
ok, than everything is alright. OS is on a SDD, of course, just the data are on a HDD.
Thank you a lot, to confirm it runs, as it should.
Well it seems not to work as i expected. although i set the scanning interval on both machines to 605000 s, it starts scanning each time i boot the PC. It shouldn’t be that way, should it?
There is no way to disable the initial scan when you start Syncthing. This is a known issue / feature request with no workaround as of right now.
Got it thanks. How about hibernate the device? Or at least energy saving mode?
There should be no scanning after hibernation or sleep 
.
Thank you, hibernate does work,However I have to remember to hibernate the pc, not shutting down..
I haven’t found this to be the case. Every time I resume Windows from sleep or hibernate Syncthing rescans everything.
I think @tomasz86 is referring to the case when the scan interval hasn’t passed yet. If it has, then scanning is expected after waking.
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Yeah, as long as the scan interval is set to something longer (e.g. 1 day), and you wake the device before that period has passed, there should be no additional rescan. In the past, there used to exist a setting called restartOnWakeup, which would indeed trigger a restart and thus also a rescan of all folders in that situation, but the option was removed a very long time ago.
Thanks for the clarification, I hadn’t thought about that point. Always learning!