100% disk usage is incorrect and background tasks running wild

gijoe50000 · 22 Sep 2016

So my C drive (SSD) is acting weird. Task Manager says it's running at 100% but it's only writing 2-5MB/s. The 'writing', as in the pic below is mostly Cortana doing something in Appdata. Before this it was running wild, scanning files with Windows Defender, and System even though no scan was running.

Shouldn't it be waiting until my PC is idle before it starts doing whatever it is doing? Why is is writing so much stuff to appdata? I just threw out my last HDD a few days ago because of a similar issue.. PC was claiming 100% disk usage on my D drive, running all sorts of Windows tasks and a really high response time..

It's been at 100% now for about 30 minutes, at least that's when I first saw it..

100% disk usage is incorrect and background tasks running wild-sketch.jpg

Ok, So I figured out WHAT it's doing, looks like Cortana is cataloguing my music for herself, I'm assuming, so that it can play individual songs for me.. Still doesn't explain why it's at 100% disk usage, when it's 'only' writing 2MB/s.

100% disk usage is incorrect and background tasks running wild-capture.png

dalchina · 23 Sep 2016

Hi, you might want to run a check on that disk.

If you can stop (I think it will be Groove doing it) the cataloguing process and get your PC idle, then download and run
Crystal DiskMark (free)
and check that disk's throughput.

I was dealing with one member, who eventually found an issue to do with cabling inside his desktop which increased max. write speed from around 17 to 50Mb/s

(Note: if you say 'Hey Cortana, play some music' it will launch Groove. (If Groove hasn't catalogued any, you see an unheplful error message with a Feedback option).

gijoe50000 · 23 Sep 2016

Speeds and health look ok, I think, in HDtune and CrystalDisk. Though the graph in HDtune looks a bit messy, maybe because it's the system OS (?) and windows is still insisting to writing to it constantly, with log files and background tasks.

100% disk usage is incorrect and background tasks running wild-c-ssd.jpg

I left the PC turned on overnight to sync Onedrive (since it's a completely fresh install (of the Anniversary build)). It's annoying that Cortana and search, and all sorts are still writing things to the disk 14 hours later. Even though most are only a few KB/s, SearchUI/Cortana is writing ~500KB/s.
Is this normal?
I don't remember previous version of W10 being this aggressive...

100% disk usage is incorrect and background tasks running wild-capture2.jpg

dalchina · 24 Sep 2016

Hi, Let's take Windows search first.

Have a look at your Indexing Options in the Control Panel.
Does it show indexing is complete?
Have you added a whole bunch of locations to be indexed?

(Note: Cortana in part is just a front end to Windows search - it's search of files and folders is limited to what's indexed. Don;'t confuse Cortana with Windows search, which is also accessible via file explorer (explorer.exe).

Search indexing should back off ('stop') very quickly if your PC is in use. Is this what you see?