It’s possible that the most recent Windows 11 update will slow down SSD performance

Users of Windows 11 who have installed the most recent update with new features and bug fixes are complaining about the performance of their storage devices. The impact appears to be rather severe for those who are impacted, with some reporting that the performance of file transfers has been cut in half and others reporting that the loading time for operating systems and games has significantly increased. The good news is that those who have been affected by this bug report that reverting the update brings back the storage performance it had before.

In addition, we were unable to reproduce this performance issue in a speedy test using Windows 11 and the same update.  The functionality of the storage devices is negatively impacted by the bug that has received the most feedback here. At this early level in the complaints and feedback cycle, we are unable to have full confidence in the configurations that are being affected, the scope of this issue, or what is really taking place. Yet, it appears that users of NVMe SSD storage are the ones most frequently affected by the issue.

Taking into consideration a few examples from the thread on Reddit that was brought to our attention today by Neowin. Mesp21 was one of the first people to voice their dissatisfaction with the Moment 2 upgrade. They stated that following the update, their SSD speeds dropped from 7,000 MB/s to 3,000 MB/s. The Windows update was rolled back, which restored the previous level of speed. Another user, MrBigDog99, was astute enough to preserve screenshots from the CrystalDiskMark storage benchmarking application both before and after using it. It is clear from this that disc writing have been harmed the most severely, but it is also clear that reads have not fared particularly well.

Screenshots illustrating the substantial effects on storage performance that MrBigDog99 discovered and posted on Reddit can be seen above. You can see in the image below that the Moment 2 Update had no negative impact on our system, which utilizes an NVMe SSD with specifications very comparable to those used by others (KB5023706).

It is interesting to note that Microsoft stated that it had corrected a file copy slowness with the KB5023706 update (opens in a new tab), but the upgrade seems to have the opposite impact on these users of Reddit. Regrettably, it appears as though the manufacturer of the software has corrected one issue, only to make room for a new one in the process. The performance of storage and other related issues have been particularly problematic for Windows 11, which is a shame.