Performance using physical vhdx files compared with standard

Hi folks
Has anybody done any sensible comparrative tests of the relative performance of Windows 11 using Physical vhdx files (NOT a VM or running under HYPER-V) compared with using "Standard partitioning".

It seems to me (only intuitively) that while bootup might take a few microsecs longer (if you have several Windows installs and go via the basic Windows Blue boot menu) that things run just as smoothly -- I certainly can't tell any difference in normal use. Maybe those with nice "Geeky" measurements out there could answer this.

I'm curious.

Cheers
jimbo

Well, I haven't run any performance tests or benchmarks, but this is how I am currently running Windows 11 on my main desktop gaming machine. My main machine still runs Windows 10 and is rock solid, so I haven't felt the need to change anything. However, I wanted to test and see how Windows 11 worked with my hardware, so I created a .vhdx file and installed Windows 11 to that.

I haven't noticed any performance penalty in normal day to day tasks. It feels like native performance. But one could probably prove synthetically that it's different.

jimbo45 said:

Hi folks
Has anybody done any sensible comparrative tests of the relative performance of Windows 11 using Physical vhdx files (NOT a VM or running under HYPER-V) compared with using "Standard partitioning".

It seems to me (only intuitively) that while bootup might take a few microsecs longer (if you have several Windows installs and go via the basic Windows Blue boot menu) that things run just as smoothly -- I certainly can't tell any difference in normal use. Maybe those with nice "Geeky" measurements out there could answer this.

I'm curious.

Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

Well, it is not that difficult to test yourself.

I have run passmark in the past on native OS and VHDX files, and got maybe up to 2-3% difference but I have an mid range i7 withfast nvme drives.

It all comes down to speed of access to drives and cpu time to manage it.

However, with slower drives, difference may be more obvious. In the end, the difference is pretty unoticeable but the gaming brigade may notice it.

On a similar note, having Hyper-V enabled marginally slows down pc as well (Host OS actually runs as a virtual machine as it is on top of the hypervisor). The fastest pc will be Host OS with Hyper-V disabled.

I am prepared to "sacrifice" a bit of performance to run Hyper-V as the vms run much better than using type 2 hypervisors. However my main OS is always directly installed. I use vhdx files for Insiders where performance is not really an issue - I am just using them as test beds.