rsync - May 2009 - Any way to optimize --link-dest with lots of [small] files?

I use rsync --link-dest as the basis of a backup solution.  It works 
extremely well.

But one thing I've noticed is that it can spend hours in a loop of stat
(), getxattr(), link(), repeat.  Is there some way to optimize this?  
It's not a big deal, but I'm just wondering.

I did consider doing a copy w/o --link-dest, and then running a program 
to look for linking opportunities, but I cannot imagine that this would 
really be an improvement.  And maybe improvement really isn't possible.

But I thought I'd ask, just in case...

Thanks...

	Andrew