I've been having this issue for some time now. Whenever trying to perform any action in TortoiseSVN on a directory under a mapped network drive the operation takes an inordinate amount of time to complete, while performing the same actions on my local drive are super fast.
I am unable to work on the files that I'm having the issue with on my local drive due to the development environment here.
Is there anything I can do (or get the sysadmin to do) to speed up the operations or will I just have to hurry up and wait?
TortoiseSVN 1.8.5, Build 25224 - 64 Bit , 2014/02/18 20:05:11 Subversion 1.8.8, -release
Short answer: Don't use network drives!
TortoiseSVN is notoriously slow on network drives. This has to do with how it does those icon overlays. The speed issue on Network drives is mentioned in the manual in Chapter 4 about the settings. By default, TortoiseSVN turns off the overlays on network drives to help speed up network drive overlays. Do not turn it back on.
From the FAQ:
Why are the icons only visible on local and not on network drives?
Go to theSettings -> Look and Feel -> Icon Overlaysand check the drive types for which you want to see overlay icons. Be aware that enabling overlays for network drives will slow down not only TortoiseSVN but the whole system.
I hope that you're not using file:// protocol and and accessing the repo on a shared drive. You are never supposed to do that.
Do not ever do use a shared repository over a network drive. There are several easy to install Windows based Subversion server packages (such as VisualSVNServer that are easy to setup and allow you to access SVN over a network. And, they are normally free.
You can even setup the svnserve lightweight Subversion service as a Windows service. Subversion is designed to be low maintenance and easy on the server. Any decent developer can easily setup a Subversion server and the repositories on that server. The On line Subversion manual goes through various setups, and this is one of the best written technical manuals around.
In short: Don't use a network drive. There's simply no reason to. Your working copy should be local. If you must use a network drive (sometimes people's Home directory is a network share, and you're suppose to use all documents there), you may be forced to turn off icon overlays or use the Subversion command line (which TortoiseSVN comes with, and can be optionally installed).