It could be worth seeing what happens if you disable Avast. Avast has been reported previously as associated with an entirely different issue (which is no justification in itself to suspect it here) and a search for "avast disk use "Windows 10"" does show up quite a few reports.
That falls within what I suggested- a process of elimination.
Question remains, what changed a week ago?
I uninstalled Avast and switched to Windows Defender for the time being. Unfortunately that did not cure the weird HDD activity. You can clearly see the spikes every couple of seconds in this screen shot:
That pattern continues indefinitely until the PC is shut down.
These are the apps I've installed since the first of the year:
I don't see anything there that would cause constant disk activity, but I do think narrowing down possible causes is a good idea. I'm certainly open to suggestions. :) Thanks for your help so far.
Hi, I remain concerned about your hard drive as previously commented... I'm not aware of mine making noises.
If you have a spare drive you could clone yours onto, or put a copy of the partition(s) containing your OS and programs onto you could determine if you have a drive issue. You can do that using disk imaging software (remember I recommended a backup - disk imaging should be used routinely anyway, so here's an opportunity, if you've never done it, to try out the process of replacing a drive this way.. But it does take some time.
I've not seen you try this yet..
"So, if we assume for now that your HDD isn't about to die, perhaps what's left is a process of elimination.
Try a clean boot.. if the symptoms disappear, then enable progressively until they recur.
If no change with a clean boot, try safe mode."
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