+5We have a file share on a windows server with over 300k video and picture files. Mounting the drive and trying to navigate through the file structure or searching for files is painfully slow.
Are there any tips for using Macs to access a windows server file share?? Settings to tweak or check?
+25The macOS Finder is not a great SMB client. One setting change that might help is documented here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102064
Some people have reported that Path Finder is a much better alternative than the Finder when accessing SMB shares: https://cocoatech.io/
+36Years ago at a former company, my Mac end users experienced slow performance accessing their Windows file servers. They learned on their own to simply copy the files locally to work and copy them back when done.
We later discovered the issue was not with the computers and not with the server. It was a network switch in their vicinity. It got replaced with a newer model and suddenly they could work off the server as they preferred.
Our Windows end users never really noticed a problem because they weren't working with graphics files.
A simple test you can perform is to stand up a temporary test Windows server locally to your Macs and compare speeds over a local network segment with speeds to your primary servers. Your network and server teams may be able to monitor where performance is impacted.
Also, confirm you're actually working from Windows file servers not some network appliance running its own flavor of SMB. And confirm your end users aren't storing thousands of files in a single directory, which can make browsing sluggish.
+8Years ago at a former company, my Mac end users experienced slow performance accessing their Windows file servers. They learned on their own to simply copy the files locally to work and copy them back when done.
We later discovered the issue was not with the computers and not with the server. It was a network switch in their vicinity. It got replaced with a newer model and suddenly they could work off the server as they preferred.
Our Windows end users never really noticed a problem because they weren't working with graphics files.
A simple test you can perform is to stand up a temporary test Windows server locally to your Macs and compare speeds over a local network segment with speeds to your primary servers. Your network and server teams may be able to monitor where performance is impacted.
Also, confirm you're actually working from Windows file servers not some network appliance running its own flavor of SMB. And confirm your end users aren't storing thousands of files in a single directory, which can make browsing sluggish.
I have made the same experience in the past, most times it was an issue with the network. And yes, Windows Users never reported this kind of issue because they were not working with huge graphic files ...
+5What are the network settings we need/don't need to make this better?
+36What are the network settings we need/don't need to make this better?
There's no specific setting that would apply equally to all models and vendors. Likely a network appliance's default network settings are just fine. I suspect a network engineer tweaked settings in either a switch or router that caused our problem.
Work with a network engineer to monitor traffic and troubleshoot.
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