How to speed up Powershell Get-Childitem over UNC

Question

DIR or GCI is slow in Powershell, but fast in CMD. Is there any way to speed this up?

In CMD.exe, after a sub-second delay, this responds a

Answer 1

Here is a good explanation on why Get-ChildItem is slow by Lee Holmes. If you take note of the comment from "Anon 11 Mar 2010 11:11 AM" at the bottom of the page his solution might work for you.

Anon's Code:

# SCOPE: SEARCH A DIRECTORY FOR FILES (W/WILDCARDS IF NECESSARY)
# Usage:
# $directory = "\\SERVER\SHARE"
# $searchterms = "filname[*].ext"
# PS> $Results = Search $directory $searchterms

[reflection.assembly]::loadwithpartialname("Microsoft.VisualBasic") | Out-Null

Function Search {
  # Parameters $Path and $SearchString
  param ([Parameter(Mandatory=$true, ValueFromPipeline = $true)][string]$Path,
  [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$SearchString
  )
  try {
    #.NET FindInFiles Method to Look for file
    # BENEFITS : Possibly running as background job (haven't looked into it yet)

    [Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.FileSystem]::GetFiles(
    $Path,
    [Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.SearchOption]::SearchAllSubDirectories,
    $SearchString
    )
  } catch { $_ }

}