Compiling in WSL2 is 6x Faster than on native Windows- Why?

Question

I have 2 IDEs - vscode and Eclipse that both compile 6x slower on the native host than they do running in WSL. I;ve tried different compiler and different code bases, and they are all about the same. This is a mid end machine with 2TB NVME SSD and a Ryzen 3900X and I've ensured the same number of cores are being used.

Windows just seems far slower for all the file access that the C compiler must use for the header files and searching all the paths.

I don't really want to use WSL because the USB support is tricky, but I can't ignore 6x less waiting!

I've heard windows 11 has a "Dev Drive" and that essentially just a VHD. Can I just move my source files to a VHD?