Windows 10: Why is my disk usage so low during download?

My pc downloads are so slow, never going to what the speedtests say, and when I go to task manager, it says only 0-6 percent of the disk is being used. I can't find any other reason that my downloads would be this slow, and can't find any answers to why the usage is near 0.

:)

 

Why is my Disk usage so low?

I just clean reinstalled WIN10 64x onto my system, and installed the appropriate drivers according to ASUS TUF GAMING FX504 - Support. While installing new software onto my computer (albeit I was mostly attempting to install multiple things at the same time) I noticed that the estimated times for completion were very long. I looked at the task manager and noticed that I had a consistently extremely low disk usage.

Sometimes the disk usage will begin to spike into the 60-80% range but often stays below 15%. I tried canceling all installation and downloading processes and only running one process, however, it still seems to perform disk R/W at an excruciatingly low speed.

I have tried to upload a screenshot but I am continuously met with a "File failed to upload" status.

While the disk usage is low, CPU usage is often low and Memory usage rarely moves a significant amount from around 7.5GB (I have 24GB RAM).

 

how to determine what's causing 100% disk usage

Considering your 2nd screenshot, assuming your Disk column is organised high to low, you have a problem with disk transfer rate- it appears to be low yet shown as 100%

There are various programs running that appear unnecessary.

Suggest you do a clean boot and compare. You should expect disk usage when idle - a few mins after boot - to be zero unless there's good reason.

Comparing your 1st and 3rd screenshots, note the max transfer rate is 10x that in the 3rd screenshot.

It's not doing an update, and not apparently a paging problem.

From that it appears you have limited disk transfer rate, and the disk activity doesn't settle to near zero.

There are several threads on the topic of limited transfer rate - here are some:
Disk usage 100% please help Solved - Page 2 - Windows 10 Forums
Slow internal hard drive tansfer speeds - Windows 10 Forums
100% Disk Usage, tried some methods found online. - Windows 10 Forums

I'd suggest looking through those first, using any ideas there, keep a list of what you try, and post back with that list if you still have problems.


Please post specs of your PC. See mine for comparison.

 

Off the chart (literally!) disk usage

Glenn, we would like to check if you are still experiencing a high disk usage on your end, if yes, we would like to ask if you can try to follow the steps below for as a workaround:

• Go to Start menu and select Settings
• Select System
• Select Notification & actions
• Then turn off all notification and check if disk usage would still get a high usage.

Let us know how it goes.