diff --git a/hgext/remotefilelog/remotefilectx.py b/hgext/remotefilelog/remotefilectx.py
--- a/hgext/remotefilelog/remotefilectx.py
+++ b/hgext/remotefilelog/remotefilectx.py
@@ -325,7 +325,9 @@
         logmsg = b''
         start = time.time()
         try:
-            repo.fileservice.prefetch([(path, hex(fnode))], force=True)
+            repo.fileservice.prefetch(
+                [(path, hex(fnode))], force=True, fetchdata=False
+            )
 
             # Now that we've downloaded a new blob from the server,
             # we need to rebuild the ancestor map to recompute the