Microsoft seems at last to be paving the way for a dedicated NVMe driver under Windows 11.
At the end of last year, we reported on a little-known Windows 11 incongruity and the beginnings of a "solution". In fact, ever since the first SSDs exploiting the NVMe protocol were released, Microsoft has been tinkering with things. The publisher of our beloved Windows has never taken the time to develop a real driver dedicated to supporting this hardware. In fact, under Windows 10, and now Windows 11 and even all Windows Servers, it was necessary to go through a kind of patch: this one performs what could be called a translation of NVMe commands based on an old SCSI driver. The result is far from bad, but it's not a panacea either, and we feel that we're necessarily losing out on performance.
The impressive machine set up by Storage Review to test the NVMe driver © Storage Review
Microsoft is well aware of this, which is why - after several years - a dedicated driver has since been developed and deployed. Deployed? Well, you probably didn't notice anything on your Windows, and the reason is disarmingly simple: deployed doesn't mean the driver is activated. The NVMeDisk.sys file has indeed been added to Disk.sys, first in Windows Server 2025 and then in Windows 11 25H2... but it remains "dormant". It is therefore not activated by default, and users do not benefit from its contributions. Is Microsoft still a little afraid of the result?
The Storage Review site decided to test the matter, and in a lengthy article, the journalists go back over the configuration set up and the measurements taken, before coming to a provisional conclusion. On the configuration side, it's a veritable monster of power: two AMD EPYC 9754 processors for a cumulative total of 256 cores, 768 GB of DDR5-4800 RAM and no less than 16 Solidigm P5316 SSDs, each representing 30.72 TB!
An overview of Storage Review's testing of Microsoft's new NVMe driver © Storage Review
Published by Andrew Waag, the article details the numerous measurements made and already draws some conclusions. Of course, it should be borne in mind that Microsoft is still working on this driver, and Andrew Waag points out that users have already reported a few technical errors, particularly when deduplication is enabled. In terms of performance, however, the new driver is interesting. For example, it is possible to achieve more than 60% higher 4K random read speeds, an area in which SSDs are currently struggling. In 4K random write, we can achieve up to 40% better speeds, and whether we're talking about latency or CPU load, the progress is real. All we can do now is hope that the latest concerns will soon be rectified, and that we'll soon be able to enjoy the best our SSDs have to offer.
