Shared Folder Content Not Updating in Windows

From time to time, users of the file server may report that the contents of network folders don’t refresh automatically and new files are not immediately visible in the folder view (take a long time to appear).

New Files in the Shared Folder are Not Showing Up

For example, if a user creates a new file in a network folder (via a UNC path or on a mapped network drive), it will appear in the folder after a delay of 3–4 minutes, even if the folder contents are refreshed manually in File Explorer using the F5 key. However, if you manually enter the full UNC path to the file in the File Explorer address bar (\\lon-file-srv1\public\new_file.docx), the file opens immediately, but may not be displayed in the shared folder’s content view

The issue of shared folder contents not refreshing immediately in File Explorer after files and folders are created, deleted, renamed, or moved is typically due to Windows’ shared folder caching. The most common sources of the problem are:

• The files in the shared folder are cached using the Offline Files feature
• The SMB client caches the metadata of shared folder objects

Disable Offline Files Cache in Windows

By default, users can access all shared network folders offline because their content can be cached locally on the client (using the built-in Offline Files feature). You can prevent users from caching the contents of a shared folder by disabling offline file caching in the folder’s properties.

Open the properties of the shared folder on the Windows file server, and go to the Sharing tab -> Advanced Sharing -> Caching. Change the mode to No files or programs from the shared folder are available offline.

You can change the shared folder settings using the PowerShell command from the built-in SMBShare module:

Set-SMBShare -Name MySharedDocs -CachingMode None

Managing SMB Shared Folders Caching on Clients

The Network Redirector feature was introduced in the SMB v2.0 protocol to improve client access to shared network folders (see the table showing the different versions of the SMB protocol). This component’s purpose is to reduce traffic and SMB requests between clients and servers by caching shared folder metadata on clients’ devices. The SMB Network Redirector clears the contents of the client’s cache every 10 seconds by default.

SMB caching may not work properly if there are thousands of files and folders in a shared folder, or if SMB clients connect to the file server over a slow or unreliable network. This results in slow refreshes of the contents of shared folders for users. To reduce latency and improve content refresh in shared folders, try disabling SMB protocol metadata caching on the client side.

Use the PowerShell command to list the current caching settings on the SMB client.

Get-SmbClientConfiguration | select DirectoryCacheLifetime, FileInfoCacheLifetime,  FileNotFoundCacheLifetime

• DirectoryCacheLifetime –is the lifetime of the shared folder metadata cache obtained during the last access (default 10 seconds). During this time, the SMB client uses cached data rather than querying the SMB server for data. This improves performance, but may result in a slight delay when refreshing folder content.
• FileNotFoundCacheLifetime – ‘File not found’ response cache (5 seconds)
• FileInfoCacheLifetime – is the time for storing the cache with the file info (10 seconds).

According to Microsoft, the default values for these registry options provide optimal performance in most environments. Although the network and SMB server load decrease with a longer cache lifetime, users may experience more frequent delays when viewing updates in shared folders.

To disable metadata caching for shared SMB folders completely, set these parameters to 0:

Set-SmbClientConfiguration -DirectoryCacheLifetime 0 -FileInfoCacheLifetime 0 -FileNotFoundCacheLifetime 0

In older versions of Windows that do not support the Set-SmbClientConfiguration cmdlet, you can modify these parameters directly in the registry under the reg key HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters

You can create these registry parameters using regedit.exe or with the New-ItemProperty PowerShell cmdlet:

$regpath= "HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters"
$Name1 = "DirectoryCacheLifetime"
$Name2 = "FileInfoCacheLifetime"
$Name3 = "FileNotFoundCacheLifetime"
New-ItemProperty -Path $regpath -Name DirectoryCacheLifetime -Value 0 -PropertyType DWORD -Force | Out-Null
New-ItemProperty -Path $regpath -Name FileInfoCacheLifetime -Value 0 -PropertyType DWORD -Force | Out-Null
New-ItemProperty -Path $regpath -Name FileNotFoundCacheLifetime -Value 0 -PropertyType DWORD -Force | Out-Null

Restart the computer to apply the settings. If these parameters need to be applied to multiple domain computers, you can use the GPO to deploy registry settings.

After applying this fix, any changes made to the shared folder will be displayed on the client immediately. This is because the folder contents are updated each time, rather than using the local cache. However, bear in mind that disabling network folder caching increases network traffic and reduces the performance of the file server.