HDD usage spiking, short squeaky/creaky sound when at 100%

Hello everyone!

It's been a couple of days since my HDD start making a short, squeaky/creaky noice (definitely not grinding). At first it seemed random, then I noticed it's when the HDD is at 100% usage.

I have also noticed that my WiFi is spiking and was wondering if it may be related to the HDD issue somehow?

The HDD is used purely for storage, I have my OS and software on my SSD.

Model number and Windows version are visible in my specs.

I've done the following:

• ran Hard Disk Sentinel and CrystalDiskMark - both showing 'Good' as a result.
• ran chkdsk - no apparent issues (screenshot attached)
• disabled all startup programmes
• ran windows defender - no issues found

What may be the cause of this?

Let me know if I need to provide more details.

Thank you in advance!

Thank you for your reply!

Airflow is good, as well as temps - stable under or around 40 C

I will be checking regarding what's causing the 100% in Task Manager.

Free space - around two thirds. (not at home at the moment so I can't share exact numbers).

Backup - you got me there - whole disk has not been backed up, only the important data which is under 10 GB has been saved to cloud.

I have a first grade HDD (WD Gold) and it makes some noise. The noise it's from the reading arm, and it's normal when ready and writing.

All storage drives can fail so a backup drive is mandatory.

The good thing about mechanical drives is that you can hear a failure on the horizon.....SSD's will just stop working and all the data is lost ( although, it's usually the controller that fails ).

Caledon Ken said:

and that is why we back up regularly in multiple layers.

Absolutely, with my work, I make large format digital paintings and the .psd files can be between 3 to 20GB. I have a series of back up drives. The working drive and scratch disk is SSD and then there are x 4 2TB mechanical drives dedicated to rolling backups ( with one outside of the system ). I will avoid using SSDs for back-ups as I have had a couple fail without notice and I lost some work. For me, SSDs are too risky as a back-up solution - I don't need the speed boost.

Caledon Ken said:

Squeaky creaky are two words I would not want to use with a HDD, regardless of what Crystal disk says.

You can see that chkdsk fixed issues so that should help a little.

The next time you get 100% open Task Manager (actually you may need to have it opened ready to be used), and click on the word Disk, in the disk column, to sort the data to see what is causing the high usage.

How much free space is on your data drive?

When did you back your data up?

Are you getting could airflow over disk?

System and wsappx were the processes I noticed having highest disk usage.
What's strange is that System is constantly at Very High power usage, I find that strange.