High disc usage when running srtasks.exe

Every now and then, my disc usage goes through the roof, slowing down whatever I'm trying to do. When I looked at Task Manager today, Microsoft System Protection Background Tasks was running, accessing the disc at 99% capacity. It took 15 minutes for it to settle down.

Is this Windows Defender doing this? If not, what, and how do I stop it from consuming disc time when I'm trying to use my laptop?
Windows 10 Version 1903 (OS Build 18362.900)

Hi, what's the disk transfer rate when this is happening? What type of disk is it? HDD? SSD? ...

SSD. Transfer rate is up to 7.2MB/s.

This doesn't happen all the time, though the disc is constantly active. It seems W10 is always busy, busy, busy, but when disc usage gets high, it slows everything down.

Hi, that's a low transfer rate- I've usually seen them that low at 100% disk usage with HDDs.

Disk usage depends on your applications and configuration of course; when idle you'd hope for 0


Attached are some notes related to low transfer rate.

Absolute basics:
Are your page file settings default, and do you have plenty of spare space on C: ?

Here I'm copying a large file from C: to C: (SSD):


Apart from the transfer rate issue, try a clean boot: is your disk usage near 0 when the PC is nominally idle?