Why your SSD is slower than it should be in Windows

NVMe SSDs are fast. Windows has several features that can prevent them from reaching their potential during gaming.

Write caching

Windows should have write caching enabled for SSDs. Check:

Device Manager → your SSD → Properties → Policies → "Enable write caching on the device" should be checked.

Without write caching, every write waits for confirmation from the drive before the OS considers it complete. This is safer but slower.

AHCI vs IDE mode

If your BIOS is set to IDE mode instead of AHCI for SATA drives, you lose significant performance. Check BIOS settings. Switching post-Windows-install requires a registry fix to avoid BSOD.

Power management for NVMe

Windows applies power management to NVMe drives — the drive enters low-power states when idle and has a spin-up latency when accessed again. For gaming with asset streaming, this causes micro-stutters.

Disable NVMe power management:
Device Manager → Disk drives → your NVMe → Properties → Power Management → uncheck "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"

Scheduled defrag on SSD

Windows should recognize SSDs and schedule optimization (TRIM) instead of defrag. Verify:

defrag C: /A — shows optimization type. Should show "Retrim" not "Defragment" for SSDs.

TRIM

Ensure TRIM is enabled:

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

Should return 0. If it returns 1:

fsutil behavior set disabledeletenotify 0

IzanagiOP enables write caching, disables NVMe power management, and verifies TRIM status. https://terweb.lt/