Windows 10: My hard drive runs at 100% practically all the time. My PC is SLOW! What can I do to...

Hard drive constantly runs at 100%

:)

 

hard drive is at 100% all the time

Hi andrewgetz1 ,

If you mean your hard drive is at 100% access all the time:

Open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc)

Click on the Disk Column Header so the arrow faces down

What processes are now at the top of the processes list?

 

Hard drive routinely jumps to 100% and is slow

Hello,

My Windows 10 PC has been really slow. I remember it being like this for a while, even back when I had Windows 7. I would really appreciate your help. *Smile My Windows Version is 1909 Build 18363.836


Symptoms:

I have a 1TB Seagate ST1000DM hard drive. I noticed that often times the HDD will be at 100% usage, sometimes even with low transfer speed (e.g. less than 1 mb/s). It happens when I open a program, at bootup, and randomly as I use the computer.

When it jumps to 100%, all programs become unresponsive and slow. Programs take ages to open like my web browser, Firefox, as the hard drive thrashes before it finally opens and the HDD settles down.

Other times, the HDD usage is 0% and every open program is smooth until I open a new program. Then the HDD momentarily jumps to 100% and all programs slow down.

At bootup, everything is really sluggish. It takes forever to log in, and the log-in screen is very slow. Finally, everything settles down after at least 10 minutes I recall.

I used a program called Autorun Organizer to disable and delay some startup programs, which helped speed up boot a lot. Still, as the delayed programs open, there is slowdown.

When RAM is filling up, rising to 80% I think, the System process starts using 100% disk usage and everything becomes very slow if not unusuable.

I experimented, and the HDD jumps to 100% frequently such as when I first open programs. I opened Internet Explorer and it jumped to 100% before falling, though later it opened faster and didn't jump the HDD usage. Alarms & Clock app jumped it to 70%, and Voice Recorder jumped it to 85%.

When I opened Calculator just now, Windows Defender showed up and took 60% disk usage and I heard the HDD, but those other times the program itself takes up the disk usage.

I have Epic Games Launcher and Steam installed on my PC. I noticed that Epic Games launcher will try to auto update my games in the background, which slows down the PC.

Troubleshooting Steps:

Windows Security uses a lot of HDD at times. I decided to install BItdefender to see if Win Defender had a problem, but Bitdefender caused my HDD to slow down even more. It caused a black screen for 30 seconds at bootup before the log-in screen loaded, so I removed it.

I've tried to do some troubleshooting with my hard drive. I've checked it with SeaTools using their "Short generic" and "long generic" test, which it passed.

I've also run the SMART test which passed. In addition, CrystalDiskInfo says health is Good and so does Hard Disk Sentinel.

I ran Check Disk, which passed. I ran a full antivirus scan with Win Defender, which found nothing. I ran SFC /scannow which found some corrupt files and fixed them. I also checked Disk Defragmenter and it is good.

Running a "Random 4k" test with Crystal Disk Mark says I have 0.63 read MB/s and 0.85 write MB/s.

I read that I could disable SuperFetch, which helped a lot. Now the computer isn't constantly bogging down from HDD usage. The System process used to cause 100% disk usage, which lead me to the solution. (It still jumps up occasionally, like when I have at least 80% RAM usage.)

I did a fix for the "PCI-express firmware bug," which didn't help. I took some steps from this video:

Thoughts

I think there's a problem because the hard drive routinely jumps to 100% and slows down from normal actions or randomly slows. It happens when I open Firefox or boot up, and random Windows processes will cause it.

My computer is very old. It's custom built by a friend from 2013, and my HDD is from 2016 I think. It has 9600 power on hours and 4775 power on counts.

Could you help me decide if my hard drive has a problem and needs to be replaced? Thanks!

p.s. I hope everybody's doing okay.

 

My hard drive is failing what do I do?

Ok, so my hard drive is over 5 years old and now its failing. I want to get an external 1tb hard drive to replace that. I need to know how to move everything into the external hard drive and make the new external hard drive the default hard drive. I need
to know if this will boost my PC performance a lot and if I should take out the internal hard drive when im done moving all the files. I also need to know if I will need to reinstall windows again on my PC. If I get the external hard drive and move everything
there, but keep the internal hard drive will my pc keep running slow? Please help me and ask me for more info.