Mike,

 

I haven't experienced anything like this, but just a couple of questions:

   - What is the disk configuration? RAID5?

   - What is the size of the cache in front of the disk?

Just an idea, but maybe if your cache is a few gig, the first ones went fast because you were just waiting for the cache to respond, but then once the cache was full, subsequent creates are as slow as the disk.

 

Dennis Williams