I too have been seeing a problem with very slow file access in large directories.
Specifically, On a Cygwin/Win2k box, I have a mirror of an FTP site. The site has 2.5 million files spread between 100 directories. (20,000 - 30,000 files per directory) I have previously run this number of files in an NT4 NTFS filesystem without significant performance problems. In this site, operations like these are __VERY__ slow. ls ${some_dir} ls ${some_dir}/${some_path} cp ${some_file} ${some_path} cp -R ${some_path_with _only_a_few_files} ${some_path} If I look at the performance monitor, I can see a queue depth of 1-2 and 300-500 disk reads per second. (That's real. It's a fast array) The reads appear to be single-block reads, as the throughput during these events is 1.5 - 3MB/sec. I am beginning to think the disk activity relates to NTFS permission checking, which can be complex under Win2k. I don't know how to debug or tune this. Any ideas? -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/