Windows SSD Performance: Check Your Power Settings

The Problem

My Windows desktop was experiencing terrible SSD performance — average response times of around 200ms, causing sluggishness across the board.

The Solution

A Windows Update had quietly changed my power plan away from High Performance. On a desktop with SSDs this is a killer — the system throttles storage I/O to save power that doesn’t need saving.

Quick fix in an elevated PowerShell:

powercfg /setactive SCHEME_MIN

This switches to High Performance mode.

Result: SSD average response time dropped from 200ms → 0.5ms.

On a laptop you’d notice the power plan change immediately. On a desktop it’s easy to overlook — and Windows Updates are known to reset it silently.

Originally shared on LinkedIn . Diagnosed step by step with Claude Opus 4.5.