Windows 10: Disk usage 100%, read/write 0kbps

Okay, so

Lately I've had crazy boot and load times, and what appeared to be disk issues (usage was 100%, read/write was little-to-none). Disabled a few things in services.msc (superfetch and windows search), which fixed the 100% constant usage.

But boot and load are unaffected. and i've also found that in games(Ark) and stress tests (prime95 blend), i can't get ram usage over 5.6/8.

I'm not sure if the problems are related. This is my first foray into 10forums, and my tech knowledge is limited.

any thoughts or suggestions? will provide details as needed

:)

 

Disk Usage at 100%

When this issue occurs, the task manager will report disk usage at 100%, however no task will be doing more than a few KB/s of reads/writes.

 

Windows 10 is giving my D Drive ****...

So.. Now I'm thinking the problem might be my storage HDD itself.

When I run a benchmark on it everything seems fine, speeds around 100MB/s but when Windows is accessing the drive it's saying 100% disk usage, but only reading or writing ~0.5-1MB/s. The drive also failed to show up on my last two reboots but it showed up
again on the third boot which has me worried.

It passed a S.M.A.R.T test on Seatools just fine a few minutes ago, but I'm running a FixAll test now and it's saying 100% disk usage with zero read and write speeds.

I'm thinking that all the activity I saw earlier was just a lot of normal Windows activity (a few kb/s) but with some performance issues and maybe some failed/repeated reads, and Task Manager was showing it as 100% disk usage for some reason.

Time to buy a new HDD I think..

 

Welcome to the forum.

There is nothing that would indicate a memory problem. Most likely the system memory manager hasn't assigned more memory to processes because more wouldn't significantly improve performance. Don't be misled into believing that only 5.6 GB RAM is being used with the rest being wasted. Open Resource Monitor and look at the memory tab. Likely a substantial portion of memory is in standby, which is good. This memory is by no means unused but is making a significant contribution to performance. Only memory labeled as "Free" is unused. The ideal value for free memory would be zero at all timed but we are not there yet.

Of course it is possible there is a memory problem but based on the information provided that doesn't seem likely.

 

Hm. Checked on that very thing, and you were right of course.

It also seems my disk read/write is still misbehaving, though. Startup boot, and the load times of several programs are still outlandish. In the midst of loading a game, my read/write constantly drops to nil, even though usage is at 100% at the time.

I've done a basic chkdsk and found no bad sectors. And if it's not likely to be a RAM problem, then the only thing I can think is that I'm being bottlenecked by some ridiculous HDD function. superfetch and windows search are still off, and since then it's definitely improved, but I don't know what else to try.

Most posts I've found online aren't very clear, or are solved after disabling the two mentioned culprits

 

Make sure, you have all drivers updated, especially SATA/AHCI Controller.
You can use Driver Easy Free to check for outdated or missing drivers.

 

Got Driver Easy, updated everything, including SATA/AHCI (and a number of other things i wouldn't have figured), restarted, but still no change. Boot time is still pretty crazy

 

Have you tried scanning your computer for any viruses? They could be culprits.

 

Done a full scan with Windows Defender (which took 19 hours total), ran HijackThis and analyzed, as well as CCleaner. Nothing suspicious turned up in any of the above.

Disk usage back to 100% regularly, with 0mbps read/write at odd intervals. Possibly HDD failure?

 

Possibly. What drive are you using to run these games on?

 

Have you tried running full test with HDTune? Take a screenshot of it when it's done.

 

I've just got HDTune, and run the benchmark. Posted ss of that and health tab. Not sure what else is needed, will update as requested

 

It appears the drive has some serious problems and needs to be replaced. Backup your data now while it is still possible. The drive may fail completely without further warning.