This is actually a problem with the design of NTFS. Small files are stored in the MFT (Master File Table) which results in heavy lock contention and slowness if

This is actually a problem with the design of NTFS. Small files are stored in the MFT (Master File Table) which results in heavy lock contention and slowness if you're doing lots of small files which is what most people tend to do these days. NTFS really does quite well on large files but small Unixy things and source code it is hopeless on. I first learned about this trying to make Subversion fast about a decade ago. You can tune some of this out with fsutil but it gives marginal gains. It's depressing though when you have a VM on windows that is faster than the native OS filesystem :(