Free NVME drive speed increase (10 to 15%)

bitman wrote on 1/6/2026, 4:42 AM

Microsoft renews the storage architecture with a new NVMe driver. This driver is already present in Windows 11 25H2 and delivers a measurable speed increase. Basically it bypasses the SCSI old architecture bottleneck. This new method is only supported on Windows server 2025. However with a registry hack you can also make it work on "normal" Windows 11.

For activation add the following registry values in your registry:

NOTE: run the commands in windows command console (Terminal Admin)

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FeatureManagement\Overrides /v 735209102 /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FeatureManagement\Overrides /v 1853569164 /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FeatureManagement\Overrides /v 156965516 /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Booting in safe mode is not possible anymore unless you add 2 extra keys to support the feature in safe boot mode:

reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Network\{75416E63-5912-4DFA-AE8F-3EFACCAFFB14}" /ve /d "Storage Disks" /f

reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\{75416E63-5912-4DFA-AE8F-3EFACCAFFB14}" /ve /d "Storage Disks" /f

After these keys are added in the registry, reboot your PC.

After a reboot you should see your NVME drives in the device manager under "Storage disks" instead of where they used to be under "disk drives".
Also note that this is not officially supported and at your own risk, but it does seem to work.

I got my Corsair MP600 Pro XT 4TB, Samsung SSD 970 EVO plus 2TB and 980 Pro 2 TB working OK.

Note also that some SSD tools like Samsung Magician do not find your NVME's anymore, probably the tools needs an update.

Comments

snibchi1 wrote on 1/6/2026, 9:04 AM

@bitman As a user of Acronis True Image, after doing some research, I would not want to use this hack.

fifonik wrote on 1/7/2026, 12:20 AM

I do not think many peolpe have bottleneck in NVMe interface and the 15% speed increase is actually remove the bottlneck.

P.S. Have you noticed any differences in real life? I think the only copy from one nvme disk to another might show some improvements. I could be wrong.

bitman wrote on 1/7/2026, 2:21 AM

@snibchi1 I use AOMEI Backupper, and it recognizes the source NVME's in my system. I do not think Microsoft want to risk anything if the system is there for Windows server setups, so I feel fairly comfortable with this.

bitman wrote on 1/7/2026, 2:40 AM

@fifonik My C: drive is NVME and holds Vegas and all my programs and games, current Vegas project data and work folders is on another NVME disk, so this will speed up my Vegas and every other program + start up time of my PC.
Difference in real life, hard to say, it feels a bit snappier, but that could be the placebo effect. Unfortunately I have not done any measurements before and after, but I trust those who did. The idea and registry hack came from a recent article in a reputable computer magazine.
As said before I do not experience any negative consequences so far, except Samsung Magician does not find the drives anymore, but Corsair SSD toolbox does find them and can read out the SMART status.
The point is, this is a free upgrade and speed increase of your system, some people buy a new PC or upgrade their HW or overclock for just a few percent of gain, and this free update is more than a few percent...

fifonik wrote on 1/7/2026, 3:36 AM

Sure, I do not mind to get any speed improvements for free.
However, I believe these days NVMe speed is quire rarely a bottleneck and the new driver is only improving random read speed and just for a bit.
Unfortunately, it has some potential issues at this moment so I would not switch to the new driver yet as from my point of view potential benefits not overweight potential issues.
Need more disk speed? Test what is the real bottleneck in your scenario and only if this is the NVMe speed -- upgrade your SSD and/or MB so both supports PCI-E 5.0 and SSD is fast. You will improve your scenario, see much bigger numbers in benchmarks, but still in normal usage the differences will not change much.
Sure, this is just my opinion.