I'm running my own Synology NAS with a webDAV server and was wondering if the number of files in Joplin affects the time it takes to sync. There are a thousand or so files in one notebook but perhaps one might get an update every few weeks.
Would Joplin's sync for the other notebooks (another 3000 files) go faster if I removed the 1000 that very rarely get updated? Perhaps to a second profile?
I don't expect removing files to make a huge difference. Joplin does list all files on the server at least once so there may be some overhead here but I don't think this is a bottleneck for sync.
I was going to say that your can just give it a try but realised that even if you removed the notes but had history enabled you'd still have files representing those revision.
I went and tried it.
A sync on my slowest mobile, a Samsung A8 tablet, was taking about 8 seconds. The fastest, a Samsung S7+ tablet, under 2.
I exported the notebook to a JEX file, had history turned off and after deleting the 1000 notes (each had 2 images attached for a total of just under 1GB) I waited until Joplin had cleaned up the now orphan attachments.(I checked every few hours.)
I did a sync on a few mobile devices to clear the notes and another after Joplin had eliminated the attachments. The mobiles reported all the local items deleted.
Another mobile sync to see what would happen now that there were 1000 files less to look at.
The slowest device took 8 seconds, the fastest under 2. No difference at all.
Then I imported the JEX file and did the Sync. I made sure everything was back the way it had been and went to the mobiles.
Did a sync on the mobiles to reload all the notes. Closed Joplin, reopened and did another sync to clean up anything missing.
At this point I assume I was back to where I started so I did a normal sync where nothing would have changed.
The slowest device took 8 seconds, the fastest under 2. No difference at all.
I am just guessing here but I'd say the number of files has very little to do with the time it takes to sync when using a fast NAS on a fast Wi-Fi local network. Maybe there would be a large difference if the number of notes was ten times higher but I'm not likely to end up with 30,000 notes so I will never know. And I prefer that my notes are private so I won't be testing with a public cloud provider.
Thanks for checking.
8 seconds seems quite slow, especially if all your devices are on the same network.
What's your WebDAV server btw?
At some point I had a few ideas how Joplin's WebDAV sync could be improved but never got to testing any of them.
I'm running a couple, both Synology, but the webDAV server is a DS220+, dual bay with a pair of Seagate IronWolf 4TB mirrored. For regular large file transfers to/from my laptop via my local network I get 109 MBps,a little over a gigabit/second. The Samsung A8 is pretty much their bottom-of-the-line tablet while the S7+ was, a few years ago anyway, the top. I have a bunch of Samsung tablets around the house. The A8, A7, S3, S4, S6 and S7+. The S7+ is fastest for processing while the S4 is by far the fastest for memory access. It can SMB Sync a 17,000 file photo collection (none changed) in 6 seconds while the S7+ takes 26.
I was wondering about the webDAV/file count as I was looking at another app, Obsidian, as a possible repository for a thousand or so large notes (1MB each) that see very, very little access. I thought I might get a big speed boost for Joplin by moving them over. Testing showed no improvement though.
I meant, what's the WebDAV server software? Is is Apache, Nextcloud or something less common?
It's from Synology and they claim "Synology Inc." is the developer but whether they truly did develop it or just tweaked somebody else's I don't know.