"Preserve external container storage" makes imports incredibly slow (21 Comments)

Issue report by Kepi

Product

FileMaker Pro

Version

13.0.2

Operating system version

Mac OS X 10.9.2

Description of the issue

Importing records from a table with externally referenced container data is significantly slower when using the new "Preserve external container storage" import option.

(original thread here: http://forums.filemaker.com/posts/de42b22b99);

Steps to reproduce the problem

Run an import from a table with externally referenced container data both with and without the "Preserve external container storage" option enabled.

Expected result

When running with the option enabled, the import should be significantly faster than running without since it doesn't need to copy any of the container data.

Actual result

Running with the option enabled is 8x slower to move a fraction of the data.

Exact text of any error message(s) that appear

n/a

Configuration information

Here's my setup for the tests I ran.

Source

SSD drive, empty except for...
... non-served FileMaker file and it's "sidecar" folder of container documents
Total documents size: 229GB
Number of records: 47,652

Destination

Separate SSD drive, empty except for...
... non-served copy of the Source's FileMaker file created with a Save as Clone (a new clone was created for each test run)
A script containing an Import Records step bookended by Get( CurrentTimestamp )
The Import Action was set to Add new records
Auto-calcs were disabled in the import options
"Preserve external container storage" was toggled as necessary depending on which test I was running


Running the script with "Preserve external container storage" disabled: 1 hour 6 minutes to import 229GB of document data

Running the script with "Preserve external container storage" enabled: 8 hours 24 minutes to import 45.1MB of record data

Workaround

Don't use the "Preserve external container storage" option.