Windows seems to have a low-level api for querying the filesystem/vfs for changes since you last looked: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa36...
And BTRFS has some ability to do this with find-new: http://www.tummy.com/blogs/2010/11/01/fun-with-btrfs-what-fi...
It's nice that btrfs has these new interesting features, also see send/receive, but it's not available in the vfs, and I suppose never will be.