If Windows operates on files in a weird order or troublesome delays, one 
possibility is to use transactional file access. There is a new feature 
called 'Transactional NTFS' see  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_NTFS

Crucially this supports:
1. Atomic operations on a single file:
2. Atomic operations spanning multiple files

Unfortunately, this feature is only available from Vista onwards. It may still 
be preferable to have something that works reliably on Vista+ until some 
solution for older platforms can be found (which could be much harder).

Best,
  - Martin

Hi Martin,

I've split off your observation about Transactional NTFS into its own ticket