100% Disk Activity Time and HDD health

psgf · 24 Feb 2016

Hello there. I've been in need of some help here.

First of all, sorry about my English. I haven't been practicing lately...

I've got a Dell Vostro 3450. It has never worked really well, but the performance has been degrading recently.

I have recently updated to Windows 10, in order to see if it would solve the performance problems. But then I started to face others, so I went to the forums to try to cope with them.

One of these matters was the disk activity time spiking to 100% all the time. I've tried all the things I read, but none of them stopped it.

Then I figured it could be something with the HDD itself. So I downloaded HD Tune Pro Trial and the Health screen is the one that follows.

So I ask: how grave is the situation? Can the 100% come from the HDD bad health?

Sorry if it seems too elementary, I'm really a layman.

Thanks in advance!

100% Disk Activity Time and HDD health-23-fevereiro-2016_22-50.png

100% Disk Activity Time and HDD health-gerenciador.png

philc43 · 24 Feb 2016

Hello psgf,

The two things may not be connected but the warning should make sure you back up all important files and make a system image just in case the HDD fails.

I would look into the 100% disk activity a little more and try and find what is using the disk. In Task Manager on the process tab you can view the entries in sort order according to disk activity with highest at the top. This view will tell you what is causing the read/write activity as you can see from mine below:

100% Disk Activity Time and HDD health-2016-02-24.png

dalchina · 24 Feb 2016

Hi, having read a few reports found with a search on "100% disk activity, low cpu use" - from Win 8 onwards, I suggest:

a. disable readyboost if in use
b. disable defragmentation
c. try changing the power plan from balanced to high performance
d. if you use Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology try updating it- see:
100% Disk Usage - Page 4
e. Windows Defender may be active whilst disk use is high.

These are things people have reported have had an effect. However, this doesn't necessarily identify an exact cause, so is unsatisfactory.

dalchina · 25 Feb 2016

Also you can try this:
Solution

“What fixed it for me was going to
Settings, System, Notifications,
and turning off "Show me tips about Windows."

I believe that was the one causing problems, though I turned all of them off besides the app notifications. System processes went back down after a restart and haven't spiked since.”
From

https://www.tenforums.com/performance-maintenance/41836-system-compressed-memory-slowing-down-disk-operation.html
Symptoms:

System and compressed memory slowing down disk operation

System and compressed memory process was doing a lot of read and write on the disk.

I was told to disable and stop running the Windows Services called "Superfetch" and "Windows Search" while it seems to have worked perfectly for many, it hasn't for me. I still have 100% disk usage and a very loud constant fan.

Windows 10 high Disk usage (100%) I've seen a thread here explaining how to fix it but I seem to have lost it... : techsupport

psgf · 25 Feb 2016

Thanks for your replies!

Philc43, that list varies a lot. Sometimes it shows 100% without any of the processes listed actually using it. In the resource monitor, even with few processes and low read/write rates, it frequently reaches 100% activity time, as in the screenshot. Clues?

Dalchina, I had tried all of these, except the Rapid Storage one. The performance actually got better (it was nearly unusable before). I don't know if it's the case, but I'll check it.

dalchina · 25 Feb 2016

I get the impression there's a small group of people experiencing high disk activity without a clearly apparent process being related to it. I've not yet seen a task manager screenshot or similar representing that period- one person said they couldn't do that given the high disk activity. Another that the Procmon record during such a period didn't seem to show anything unusual.

Ideas anyone?