NTFS isn't especially slow, the Windows filesystem layer as a whole is slow. All those layers of abstraction that allow for things like automatic security scanning of opened files don't come cheap.
A Python script creating 10000 empty files takes 1.2s on C:, but only 0.5s on D:.
Both are NTFS partitions on the same SSD, both partitions are using the default settings. (but the defaults differ: on the system drive Windows enables compatibility features such as 8dot3names, on additional partitions it does not)
