How to Monitor NVMe SSD Speeds in Windows 11

Monitoring your NVMe solid-state drive’s (SSD) real-time read and write transfer rates in Windows 11 is essential for diagnosing performance bottlenecks, checking drive health, and tracking data-heavy tasks. Windows 11 includes several built-in utilities—such as Task Manager, Resource Monitor, and Performance Monitor—that provide live speed tracking without requiring additional software. For more granular hardware telemetry, lightweight third-party utilities can also be used.

1. Using Windows Task Manager (Quickest Method)

Task Manager is the fastest way to view current read and write speeds across all connected drives.

  1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc (or right-click the Start menu and select Task Manager).
  2. Click on the Performance tab on the left-hand navigation bar (represented by a pulse/graph icon).
  3. Select your NVMe SSD from the list of disks (e.g., Disk 0 (C:)).
  4. Look at the bottom right under the live graph to see:
    • Read speed: Current data being read in KB/s or MB/s.
    • Write speed: Current data being written in KB/s or MB/s.
    • Active time: The percentage of time the drive is actively processing requests.

2. Using Resource Monitor (Detailed Per-Process View)

Resource Monitor breaks down disk activity by individual applications and background services, showing exact byte-level transfer rates.

  1. Press Windows Key + R, type resmon, and press Enter.
  2. Click on the Disk tab at the top.
  3. Expand the Processes with Disk Activity and Disk Activity sections.
  4. Review the columns:
    • Read (B/sec): Real-time read rate for specific processes and files.
    • Write (B/sec): Real-time write rate for specific processes and files.
    • Total (B/sec): Combined input/output throughput.

3. Using Performance Monitor (Advanced Real-Time Graphing)

Performance Monitor allows you to track custom metrics and plot precise read/write graphs over time.

  1. Press Windows Key + R, type perfmon, and press Enter.
  2. In the left pane, expand Monitoring Tools and click Performance Monitor.
  3. Click the green plus icon (+) on the toolbar to add counters.
  4. Scroll down and expand PhysicalDisk.
  5. Select Disk Read Bytes/sec and Disk Write Bytes/sec.
  6. Under Instances of selected object, choose your specific NVMe SSD instance and click Add >>, then click OK.
  7. The graph will now plot high-precision real-time throughput metrics.

4. Using Third-Party Diagnostic Tools

If you need deeper hardware telemetry such as drive temperature, controller load, and throughput side-by-side, third-party software provides consolidated dashboards: