Increasing the DFS-R Staging Directory
If you are using the DFS to sync large amounts of data then you may have seen Event ID’s 4202 & 4204. This is likely because the staging directory is filling up.
When the staging directory fills up completely, the sync’ing will stop for a while and restart again. This can make the whole process very long if there is a lot of data to sync, ie it keeps stopping and starting again. So, one solution to this is to increase the size of the staging directory so that this is less likely to happen. Increasing it by 50% is a good place to start but make sure you have enough disk space before changing anything.
To change the staging directory quota, do the following :
Open DFS Management
Expand the ‘Replication’ section on the left hand side
Click on the replication group that you wish to change
Click the ‘Membership’ tab on the right.
Find the replicated folder you would like to apply the changes to.
Right click the folder and go to ‘Properties’.
Click on the ‘Advanced’ tab and you should see a ‘Quota’ setting.
Adjust the setting according to what you need. (The default is 4096Mb)
Hopefully this should stop the DFS from stalling, or at least make it less frequent, and so the sync’ing should be smoother and faster. 