Many Windows 11 users across various internet forums, Microsoft forums, and Reddit are reporting sluggish NVME SSD performance on their systems. Certain benchmarks show that on the same system Windows 11 might show a reduced number of IOPS for random writes on NVME SSD disks.
One example of degraded performance was reported by the user MarceRivero that shows the Samsung 980 Pro drive benchmark on both Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems. As you can see from the screenshot below, there is a significant IOPS drop on Windows 11 compared to its predecessor.
Image credit: Microsoft Forums/MarceRivero
A couple of more reports could be found on Reddit where a user named MahtiDruidi is asking why both random write and access times have plummeted with Windows 11 while gdeadphilly user reported a crippled SSD (NVMe) performance when he upgraded to Windows 11.
Microsoft has acknowledged the issue in a blog post and said that the issue is caused by the USN journal on the C:/ drive that is always enabled and keeps track of changes made to the drive.
A fix will be released in Windows Preview build KB5007262 with the following note from Microsoft:
- Addresses an issue that affects the performance of all disks (NVMe, SSD, hard disk) on Windows 11 by performing unnecessary actions each time a write operation occurs.