Microsoft is preparing one of the most consequential changes to Windows storage performance in more than a decade: a fundamental rewrite of how the operating system communicates with modern solid-state drives. The overhaul targets the core of Windows input/output handling and removes architectural compromises that date back to an earlier generation of storage technology. The first platform to benefit will be Windows Server 2025, with Windows 11 expected to follow once the new approach has been validated at scale. At the centre of the change is NVMe — the protocol that underpins virtually all high-performance SSDs used today in servers, workstations and premium laptops. This shift, which could materially alter how Windows systems scale under load, is reported by The WP Times.
Why Windows NVMe performance has been limited until now
At present, Windows supports NVMe drives through a generic Microsoft driver, but with a critical limitation that has constrained performance for years. NVMe commands are internally translated into the much older SCSI command model before being processed by the operating system. SCSI was designed in the 1980s for slower, largely sequential storage devices and remained adequate through the SATA era. However, it is fundamentally ill-suited to PCI-Express SSDs, which rely on deep queues and massive parallelism to achieve their speed.
As SSDs evolved from SATA to PCIe 3.0, 4.0 and now 5.0, this translation layer increasingly became a bottleneck. Modern NVMe drives are capable of handling millions of simultaneous operations, but Windows has often forced those requests through serialised pathways originally built for spinning disks. The result has been higher latency, unnecessary CPU overhead and storage hardware operating well below its theoretical potential.
Native NVMe support in Windows Server 2025: what changes in practice
Windows Server 2025 is Microsoft’s first operating system to introduce a fully native NVMe storage stack, removing the SCSI translation layer entirely. This creates a more direct data path between applications and storage hardware, reducing command overhead and allowing SSDs to operate as they were designed to. In current preview builds, administrators can enable the feature via a PowerShell registry change. Once activated and the system rebooted, NVMe drives appear in Device Manager under “Storage Disks” rather than traditional disk categories — a visible sign of the architectural shift.
The performance gains Microsoft is highlighting are substantial. On high-end PCIe 5.0 SSDs, internal benchmarks show random input/output operations per second (IOPS) increasing from roughly 1.8 million to around 3.3 million. These gains are immediately relevant to data-intensive workloads such as databases, virtualisation platforms, analytics pipelines and high-frequency logging systems.
Beyond raw throughput, efficiency improvements may prove even more important in real-world environments. By eliminating unnecessary command translation, the native NVMe stack significantly reduces CPU usage. Microsoft reports that Windows Server 2025 systems with native NVMe enabled can deliver up to 80 per cent more IOPS in random 4 KB read tests on NTFS, while consuming around 45 per cent fewer CPU cycles per I/O operation compared with Windows Server 2022. For operators running dense server clusters, this translates directly into better utilisation, lower power consumption and more predictable performance under load.
Importantly, the benefits are not limited to the latest hardware. Systems equipped with PCIe 3.0 or PCIe 4.0 SSDs are also expected to see improvements, primarily through reduced latency and lower CPU overhead rather than headline bandwidth figures. Less time spent managing storage commands means more processing capacity available for applications — a critical factor in cloud and enterprise environments.
Microsoft has described the update as a “cornerstone of the modernisation of our storage stack”, a phrase that reflects how overdue the change is. NVMe version 1.0 was finalised more than 14 years ago, and consumer NVMe SSDs have been mainstream for nearly a decade. Against that backdrop, Windows’ reliance on legacy abstractions has increasingly appeared out of step with modern hardware.
If the rollout in Windows Server 2025 proves stable, few observers doubt that the same native NVMe architecture will make its way into Windows 11. For professionals, power users and organisations investing heavily in premium SSD infrastructure, this shift could finally allow Windows to unlock the storage performance that modern hardware has long promised — but rarely delivered in practice.
Read about the life of Westminster and Pimlico district, London and the world. 24/7 news with fresh and useful updates on culture, business, technology and city life: Is Spotify Wrapped 2025 Out Yet? See When Your Music Recap Will Finally Drop