Windows 11: March 14, 2023 updates slow down some (SSD NVME) boot drives

Windows[German]After the release of the cumulative security updates for Windows 11, reports have surfaced on the Internet that the performance of SSD drives has noticeably decreased following the update installation. Uninstalling the March 14, 2023 security update causes SSDs to return to their original read/write rates. It doesn't seem to be a general problem though, but depends on the SSD models used.


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I came across the issue yesterday via the following tweet from Martin Brinkmann, which he prepared in this article on ghacks.com.

Windows 11: SSD slow after March 2023 update

Initial reports were already found a week ago on reddit.com in this thread about the Windows 11 updates for March 2023. A user named mesp21 reports a dramatic loss of read/write speed on his SSD NVME.

Tanked my SSD nvme reading and writing speeds, like A LOT. Went from 7000 to 3000, sometimes 1000 using the balance energy profile in my Legion 5 2021. Just uninstalled the cumulative update and my SSD is reaching the 7000 read speed again and Windows is snappy again. So there's a huge problem with this one.

After uninstalling the update, Windows 11 works with the old speed again. In the reddit.com thread, other users confirm this observation. One user reported that the boot time of his system more than doubled after installing the update.

Windows 11: SSD slow after March 2023 update


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In this reddit.com thread someone has posted ChystalDiskMark values of his SSD NVME with and without installed update, which should prove the speed losses. The top left screenshot shows the data with the update installed, and the right screenshot shows the data after uninstalling the March 2023 update.

The colleague from German site deskmodder.de posted his own test results for Windows 11 22H2 in this article, which does not reflect the above observation. However, in the user comments to the article it's confirmed, that the drop in read/write performance for SSD NVME drives depends on the manufacturer. Intel SSD NVME drives were mentioned several times as affected in cross-reading.

According to some users, SSDs from Crucial, Samsung and SanDisk are not affected. However, there is also a user who uses an internal Samsung SSD980 Pro M2 PCIe 4 and whose system became very slow after the update installation. I can't test anything myself, since I currently only have Windows 11 21H2 set up virtualized as a test installation.


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One Response to Windows 11: March 14, 2023 updates slow down some (SSD NVME) boot drives

  1. RGI says:

    I am using Samsung 970 Pro M2 NVME drive, and its speed definitely decreased after i finally moved to Windows 11 a week ago (i even ran CM to check, and the numbers were surprisingly low). Will try to uninstall this update to see if it is the update's fault.

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