File Geodatabase and network problems

[GavinMcGhie]

Just curious if anyone else has run into anything similar...

A few weeks ago, I tried to compress an FGDB. The process hung for 20 minutes, so I killed it (small FGDB should have taken a few minutes at most). After that, my PC has problems accessing any FGDB on a network drive. Even when I copy data from SDE to a brand new FGDB on the network, it takes over an hour (usually takes sub 5 min). Anything to do with an FGDB is slow or not working right. If I put the FGDB on the C:drive, it works fine. If I use a PGDB on the network with the same tests, no problems. I upgraded to v10 (from 9.3) and the problem persisted.

As a real kicker, the compress problem occured on my old PC. Last week, I got a new PC, fresh OS, and a fresh GIS install (back to 9.3). According to IT, they only copied over my "c:\downloads folder, My Documents, Favorites, and Desktop items to the new computer". However, the problem followed to my new PC. Other users have the same problem on my new (and old) PC. I have no problem on other PCs. I can't imagine what would have followed to the new PC based on what was copied, especially that only affects the FGDB format.

I've logged this with support, but no answers yet. Just curious if anyone else has seen anything similar?
Thanks, Gavin

[toddcomer]

Did you ever get an answer?

I have found through my own testing, and through discussions with ESRI that File & Personal Geodatabases have progressively LOST their ability to function correctly on networks.  This issue is compounded in v10 to include shapefiles.

In v11, you will likely be restricted to storing your data on mylar.

[GavinMcGhie]

No answer yet. Haven't heard back from support since yesterday morning when the response I got included "good luck", sometimes esri speak for you're on your own. Classic on the mylar comment! I'll follow the posting if I get an answer.

[toddcomer]

The "official" response from ESRI support:

Full functionality of File/Personal Geodatabases, or Shapefiles, on networks could not be guaranteed, supported, and would not be addressed, because no two networks are the same.

The workaround suggested:

Store your File/Personal Geodatabases on the network drive.  When you need to edit or otherwise manipulate the same, copy the F/PGDB or Shapefile to a local drive.  When you are done, copy it back to the network drive.

Like I said, mylar is looking better and better... and so is Q-GIS!

[GavinMcGhie]

Yep. In addition, I was finally starting to feel like ESRI support was getting good again. Unfortunately, they just completely dropped me on this issue. I emailed them multiple times and even logged a "what is going on with this issue" question through the services pages. It's been several weeks now and not even a peep from them. I'm disappointed that they did not even have the courtesy to respond with a note that they were dropping the issue. I ended up rebuilding my PC a 2nd time and the issue "seems" to have gone away. Now I just avoid using a FGDB. Nice eh?

[MatthewBampton]

I'm running into what seems to be a similar problem: I have to keep a large dataset on a secure network drive.  Although I can connect to the drives I'm working with through Windows, Arc won't see the drives when I try to connect to them.  If I have an mxd in the root of my secure drive, I can open that, and then my home folder is set to the root of the drive.  However everything runs slow, and navigation is clumsy and slow.

[MichaelMirro]

Its good to know I am not the only one having geodatabase/network problems.  I too have a FGDB, not too big, that is completely unresponsive.  Using the identification tool can take over a minute to get a response.  Other, much smaller databases will actually respond faster, however, they can take over a minute to initially open when adding data.  I just upgraded it to 10 from 9.2 because of performance issues, which actually made the problem worse.  I have worked with support and was told that I should put it on a local drive, where it did function adequately when tested; however, with three of us using this database from different computers and a history of projects mapped to the database, its not really a preferable option to put it on a local drives as the recommend.  I would love to hear a solution to this, because for the time being, unless I drastically restructure my work flow and data structure, its not much fun doing GIS anymore.

[GavinMcGhie]

FWIW, my take is that something esri is doing with the FGDB is writing something to your PC's registry, or some other permanent location that is buried deep. As I said, my problem originated with an esri function, only affected the esri FGDB on a network drive (0 other network problems and the FGDB folder did not have problems in windows explorer), and persisted until I rebuilt my PC from the ground up. Even migrating the basics to a new PC did not help. I spent hours digging through and swapping out various esri system files with no luck, so I assume it was something hidden to us normal users. Anyway, I no longer use FGDBs (call me paranoid).

One positive i would suggest (worked for me even with the broken PC) is to create a new blank PGDB in your preferred network location, and load all the layers from the FGDB (using the FGDB on a local drive) to the PGDB. Even with the FGDB problems, the PGDB performed flawlessly. Good luck!

[MichaelMirro]

The PGDB seems to work, although I do want to do a bit more testing.   And that's fine with me, as with an ArcView license, I don't see any advantages to having my as FGDBs.  It works, that's all I care about.  The only thing that will be a little bit of a nuisance, is that the file extension is different between the two database forms, so I will have relink to the data in about 100 different projects. 

Nevertheless, I am still curious.  There must be some network configuration that the FGDB is incompatible with, because this doesn't happen to everyone who keeps their data on a network.  I am convinced its network incompatibility, because the behavior is on three machines with every FGDB we have (hundreds - one per project).  Anyway...

Thanks for the advice.

[GavinMcGhie]

If you find any solid info, I'm sure a lot of folks would be interested. For us, only my PC was affected (well my old one and prior new one), while dozens of others continued to work fine with the same network settings. I'll also mention that I could login to other PCs and not have problems, and other users could login to my PC and reproduce the problem. Definitely something that got stuck on my PCs hardware.