I am currently using a NAS.
The process is as follows:
The API downloads .xlsx and .xlsm files to the NAS.
The downloaded files are renamed to have a .zip extension.
Using CMD, I run the tar command to extract the contents of the ZIP file and modify some internal content.
The file is then re-compressed and renamed back to its original extension.
The problem is that when I use CMD to extract the ZIP files stored on the NAS, the decompression speed is extremely slow — sometimes taking more than 1 minute and 30 seconds.
I only have access permission to the NAS folder itself — no SSH or web access is available.
What I need is a way to significantly speed up the decompression process on the NAS, given these permission constraints.
When extracting archives directly from a NAS over SMB, the operation becomes extremely slow because each read/write happens across the network, causing heavy I/O latency. Since you don’t have SSH or direct access to the NAS, the best workaround is to avoid decompressing files directly on it.
You can significantly speed things up by first copying the ZIP file to your local machine, performing the extraction and modifications locally, and then copying it back to the NAS once done. This approach takes advantage of local disk speed and can be several times faster overall.
If you must extract directly from the NAS, try using 7-Zip’s command-line tool instead of the default tar command, as it handles network reads more efficiently. Another option is to modify the ZIP (or XLSX/XLSM) contents directly using a script—such as Python’s zipfile module—without fully extracting and recompressing it.
In short, the most effective way under your current access limitations is to handle all unzip and rezip operations locally, then upload the final file back to the NAS.
As per my understanding, the decompression slowness occurs because the operation is executed over the network on the NAS instead of locally. UiPath recommends copying the ZIP file temporarily to a local drive, performing extraction and modification there, and then uploading it back to the NAS. This approach significantly improves speed by avoiding network I/O delays.
Hi,
If you only have access to the NAS folder, the fastest way is usually to copy the file to your local disk, decompress and modify it locally, and then copy it back to the NAS. Working directly on the NAS via CMD or tar is usually much slower due to network latency.