An old SATA SSD makes a better Windows boot drive than you'd think, and NVMe barely helps what you do every day

Published Oct 28, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT Richard is the PC Hardware Lead at XDA and has been covering the technology industry for almost two decades. He's been building PCs since young, and when not creating content, you can often find him inside a chassis somewhere. The question as to whether you need an NVMe drive for booting Windows is as old as the NVMe format itself. Sure, raw speeds are superior with a PCIe NVMe SSD compared to one using the SATA interface, but are you really able to fully capitalize on that advantage with daily use? I'd wager you don't, which is why outside of slightly faster Windows 11 boot times, a SATA SSD is just as good as an NVMe SSD, so long as you go and make a hot beverage while the PC boots up. Most of your workloads don't require NVMe drives Unless you regularly deal with lots of data Most games won't magically load faster because you're using an NVMe drive. In fact, we've tested it and found the actual difference between a SATA and NVMe SSD to be a couple of seconds. That's not dramatic on any level and not worth upgrading if your existing SATA drive is perfectly serviceable. I don't load that many games throughout each day. I may start a title or two, but once it's in RAM, we're largely good to go. Most games won't be able to take advantage of this increased throughput. The faster speeds you'll see in marketing materials are usually measured in peak sequential speeds. SATA III generally caps out at around 600 MB/s, while PCIe-based SSDs can hit speeds of 15,000 MB/s with the latest generation. Games, Windows as a whole, and software rely on random 4K read/write operations and controller overhead to determine performance. This is where it can get slightly confusing for consumers looking to buy a drive or laptop. The speeds shown aren't usually what you'll fully utilize. Opening apps, using software like browsers and such, you won't notice much of an improvement. You know what does require high sequential workloads? Moving multi-gigabyte video files and huge backup archives, running massive databases, or editing 4K video content. If you don't do any of that, there's a good chance you won't notice the difference. The same goes for running a SATA SSD as the boot drive for Proxmox in a home lab. I do this with the primary mini PC node, and it's quick enough. The move from HDDs was the colossal storage leap The jump from mechanical SATA hard drives to flash-based 2.5-inch and M.2-compatible modules already made a transformative difference to the booting times of an operating system, as well as making the entire OS and its installed games and software feel more responsive. Firing up your favorite flavor of Linux, macOS, or Windows involves much more than simply reading a bunch of files. Mechanical drives utilize spinning platters and moving heads to read and write data. It works great for long-term data storage, but they simply cannot match what even a SATA SSD offers, usually topping out at anywhere south of 300 MB/s. That's almost 50% of what the interface can handle. The issue back then wasn't SATA vs. NVMe, but rather HDD vs. SSD, and SATA flash storage won that battle long ago. The difference between a 100 MB/s hard drive and a 550 MB/s SATA SSD wasn't simply about throughput. It was also about removing mechanical seek latency and handling small random operations. PCIe-powered storage is brilliant at what it does, and there are times when having that additional headroom can make a world of difference, but I wouldn't rush out to replace your old SATA SSD. Buying new? NVMe makes more sense The price of SSDs, particularly SATA, is out of this world If you're building a new PC from scratch or happen to be looking for a replacement drive, I'd go with NVMe or the fastest your budget allows for the desired capacity. PCIe 5.0 SSDs can hit some ridiculous speeds, so much so that you likely won't ever see the drives hit their maximum throughput. Your LAN or some other part within the PC will likely act as a bottleneck beforehand. But if you have an available SATA SSD that's simply collecting dust, it may be time to give it another lease of life. The issue with buying SATA drives (be it a hard drive or SSD) is that prices are affecting these storage mediums just as much as NVMe. It's why the cost of NAS has skyrocketed because the drives are the most expensive part of the purchase, and yet prices only seem to be increasing thanks to the memory shortage and other strains on existing supply. Like anything within the smart home in 2026, it's always going to be better to reuse something than buy new from a retailer. More budget PCIe 3.0 or 4.0 SSDs can provide much more bandwidth than SATA without the traditional NVMe tax that would typically be applied across the board. And when it comes to choosing the right PCIe SSD, 3.0 or 4.0 are usually more than enough for most PCs. PCIe 5.0 SSDs are simply a waste of available budget if you won't take advantage of the additional bandwidth. Make sure the old SATA SSD is still healthy Just like visiting the doctor for a health check or taking the vehicle in for its planned inspection, SSDs can report on their current status using Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART). Regularly checking this should be prioritized to ensure your flash-based storage (as well as older HDDs that support it) are operating as designed. The first signs of drive failure can be attributed to some reading reported through SMART. If you want the latest and greatest in solid-state storage technology, I'm not here to stop you. What I will do is comment on how you likely don't need that fancy new PCIe 5.0 NVMe drive when a perfectly serviceable old SATA SSD is available for installation without spending a penny. And if it's not suitable for your primary desktop PC, why not build a second system or, better still, put together a compact home server and start self-hosting services?