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"NTFS really isn't that bad" - Robert Collins (LCA 2020)

linux.conf.au · 160.7K views · 2020-01-16 · 48:04

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Overview

Robert Collins explains why rustup installs were painfully slow on Windows and how changes to rustup and Windows cut install time from 3m30s to 14s. The talk covers NTFS, small files and the cost of antivirus hooks on file close.

On Hacker News

The go-to reference for why file operations are slow on Windows and how antivirus filters, not NTFS itself, are the cause.

Recommended by 5 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2020–2025

Topics

Software performance & optimizationOperating systems & kernelsC, C++, Rust, Go & systems languages
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ntfsrustupantivirusfile ioperformance

What people said

miki123211 · 2025-01 · Recommendation

And as a result of this, if you want to optimize your program to be fast on Windows, you will make very different optimization decisions than on other platforms. For example, Windows runs virus scans on close(), which makes it very slow. This means that sometimes it makes sense to have one or more background threads exclusively dedicated to closing files. There's a good talk on this at [VIDEO]

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ablob · 2024-07 · Recommendation

I want to take this opportunity to recommend the talk "NTFS isn't that bad" ( [VIDEO] ). NTFS prefers a different access pattern than most usual file systems. I remember that a part of the talk was about speed-ups on Linux as well. So even if it doesn't sway your opinion it should enhance your perspective on how file systems work.

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unchar1 · 2024-07 · Recommendation

That may be due to a combination of Malware detection + most unix programs not really written to take advantage of the features NTFS has to offer This is a great talk on the topic [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by linux.conf.au, played through YouTube.

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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