Rclone mount: slow with Excel files, why?

[dansorod (Daniel)]

I mounted an unencrypted gdrive (teamdrive) to work mostly with PDF and Excel files. PDF files open in ~3s (good for me), but Excel files (XLSX) take at least a whole minute!

I also have an encrypted gdrive with media files. No problem with these too, videos open quickly. So at the moment the issue seems to be restricted to XLSX files.

So I decided to try to mount with RaiDrive: Excel files open as fast as they should, just like any other file, ~3s.

I can keep using RaiDrive, but if it is possible to make rclone match RaiDrive performance it would be my choice.

Any idea?

Commands used to mount (both with the same issue regarding Excel files):
rclone mount --allow-other --allow-non-empty yadayada: X:

rclone mount --log-file "C:\rclone\logs\rclone.log" --log-level INFO --allow-non-empty --allow-other --default-permissions --fuse-flag sync_read --tpslimit 10 --tpslimit-burst 10 --dir-cache-time=160h --buffer-size=64M --attr-timeout=1s --vfs-read-chunk-size=2M --vfs-read-chunk-size-limit=2G --vfs-cache-max-age=5m --vfs-cache-mode=writes --cache-dir "C:\rclone\cache" yadayada: X: --config "C:\Users\user\.config\rclone\rclone.conf"

[Animosity022]

I'd remove --allow-non-empty as it's generally bad and it allows for over mounting and hiding things.

If you can run the mount with "-vv" and share the debug logs, we can take a look and figure it out.

[dansorod (Daniel)]

Log:
https://pastebin.com/FZxpQW4p

Mounted, awaited a few seconds then opened sheet sheet.xlsx. I didn't notice improvement without --allow-non-empty.

Note: there are MANY logs about sheet.xlsx even before I clicked to open it.

[Animosity022]

Sorry as allow-non-empty would not change anything in terms of speed as it is related more to making sure you aren't running multiple rclones at the same time.

Are you mainly planning to use the mount for Excel and such? The cache backend might be a nicer fit since it keeps chunks locally for quick open and close.

I'm not sure what RaiDrive offhand as I've never used it. I'd try with just mounting with something like:

rclone mount --log-file "C:\rclone\logs\rclone.log" --log-level DEBUG --allow-other --dir-cache-time=160h --vfs-cache-mode=writes --cache-dir "C:\rclone\cache" yadayada: X: --config "C:\Users\user\.config\rclone\rclone.conf

as most of the other stuff there wasn't really needed as the defaults are a bit better.

The cache backend config can be found here:

https://rclone.org/cache/

[dansorod (Daniel)]

With your command I got the same slowness to open .xlsx (2 minutes).

I'm new to this world, recently setup rclone for different purposes at home and at work, following instructions found on the web. At home, crypted gdrive with cache (Plex) mostly to backup personal media, using the second command I pasted above (the long one). At work, a simple drive (team drive) to edit spreadsheets and store PDFs.

Now I tried to upload & open the same spreadsheet at home and it was fast as I wanted, as I only managed to achieve at work with RaiDrive.

Maybe the key is the cache I have at home? I'll try. It doesn't make sense to me, the spreadsheet isn't large, 150KB without macro or complex functions (and I even tested with a blank spreadsheet). I can't guess what might be causing the slowness. And it's only with spreadsheets, as PDF opens quickly.

Edit: still slow, I don't know why it works fine at home.