Cloning and hard links under Windows

[Bob Hood]

Hey, guys.

I'm starting to think ahead to an upcoming role as "Release Manager" where I 
will be following a modified GitFlow paradigm, and merging and pulling 
changesets from an integration branch into a release branch.  When I attempt a 
merge from an unknown branch, I will usually personally create a clone of the 
repository on a separate file system (so it's a complete clone) and then, if 
the merge fails for any reason, I simply destroy the cloned folder without 
polluting my own local working copy.  If it succeeds, I push upstream, and 
then delete the cloned folder anyway.

This action of cloning under Windows can take 5-10 minutes on my machine.  For 
a single instance, that's bearable.  However, if I'm going to be doing this 
multiple times a day, that time will stack up.

I tried a clone on the same file system, and it took < 1min to complete, but 
it is also "linking" instead of copying.  I ran through the cloned working 
copy, looking for the hard links that Mercurial created, and it looks like 
some key management files are hard linked to the original repository.  I'm 
worried that a failed merge would pollute these files, which would mean that 
my original "pristine" copy would also become questionable even if I 
subsequently destroy the working clone.

My question is: Can I retain the speed of the clone that I get with hard 
linking (i.e., same file system), and then just make independent copies of the 
files that are hard linked in the clone to have a completely separate working 
copy in a timely fashion? I'd really rather not have to use the "--pull" 
protocol each time I need to attempt merges.

Thanks!