6 hours are too much. First of all you need to check your nvme performace (dd can help? dd if=/dev/zero of=/test bs=1M count=10000 andd see results. If you want results more benchmark oriented you could try bonnie++ as suggested by Jerry).
Other this, have you got kvm module loaded and enabled cpu virtualization option in the BIOS?
If yes, have you got created the VM using --accelerate?
Have you tried another distro on VM?
I mounted the partition under C7.7 and ran the nvme test. Pretty much came back in seconds for 10G test.
dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=1M count=10000 10000+0 records in 10000+0 records out 10485760000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 5.45451 s, 1.9 GB/s
Yes kvm_intel is loaded as a module.
I am using the "-hda /dev/nvme0n1" when I run qemu.... I'm thinking this works find for my other "img" files - but does not work for "well" for my physical NVME. What is the correct argument perhaps to use for running a physical NVME disk as a qemu guest ??
Thanks,
Jerry