topic Re: .snapshot directory not visible in Windows Explorer, but it is in Command Prompt in ONTAP Discussions

.snapshot directory not visible in Windows Explorer, but it is in Command Prompt

Livewire18 — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 13:57:43 GMT

I have been seeing sometihng strange in some of our clusters ever since we moved into the OnTap 9.x versions.

From a Windows 8+ or Server 2012+ machine, we are no longer able to navigate to the .snapshot directory in Windows explorer.

If you do a DIR in command prompt, you can see all the sansphots as you should, and the Properties -> Previous Versions tab also works as expected.

Something I have seen is that in if you navigate to the full path in Windows Explorer (such as \\nas.domain.name\share_path\.snapshot\daily.2018-03-02_0010) you can access it. You are then able to access \\nas.domain.name\share_path\.snapshot just like normal until you close out.

In summary:

Explorer

\\nas.domain.name\share_path\.snapshot - DOES NOT WORK

\\nas.domain.name\share_path\.snapshot\snapshot_name - DOES WORK

Command Prompt

DIR \\nas.domain.name\share_path\.snapshot - DOES WORK

DIR \\nas.domain.name\share_path\.snapshot\snapshot_name - DOES WORK

Snapshots are set to visible for all shares.

Re: .snapshot directory not visible in Windows Explorer, but it is in Command Prompt

hariprak — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 07:55:58 GMT

Hi,

Hope this KB article helps https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1000208

Thanks

Re: .snapshot directory not visible in Windows Explorer, but it is in Command Prompt

Livewire18 — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 12:50:49 GMT

*** EDIT I was able to access the link by searching for KB 1000208 directly.

But, that artical states "This can result in the inability to see certain snapshots from the Windows Previous Versions" which is not the issues I am having. We can see the Previous Version tab without issues, it is the .snapshot directory we cannot see.

Re: .snapshot directory not visible in Windows Explorer, but it is in Command Prompt

tchh77 — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 17:14:25 GMT

Have you tried looking at the "snapdir-access" option on the volume?

volume show -fields snapdir-access

Re: .snapshot directory not visible in Windows Explorer, but it is in Command Prompt

mfriedenfeld — Sun, 18 Nov 2018 20:08:00 GMT

I'm sure you've solved this already, but for anyone finding this topic with the same problem.

This worked for me for my 2012+ and windows 8+ machines accessing CIF shares.

Add DWORD key "DirectoryCacheLifetime" to the registry location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Lanmanworkstation\Parameters.

Make sure the value is "0". Reboot.

Link explaining: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-7/ff686200(v=ws.10)