10

In process tab the disk usage is always about 14%, but on this performance Disk 0 is always 100%:

usage

what is the reason for this?

It's a HDD. I am not even doing anything and its always 100%. You think this is a bug?

I have tried disabling superfetch & Windows search (even though it doesn't show it even using quarter under processes tab).

I am pretty sure this didn't happen in Windows 7. Also I tried running chkdsk and I still see this behaviour.

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6
  • First thing You should do is install Hard Disk Sentinel: hdsentinel.com It gives You a fully detailed feedback of your HDD
    – Divin3
    Commented Aug 18, 2015 at 1:31
  • Don't you have a resource monitor , resmon.exe where you can look at the disk tab and see what process is using the disk or the file(s) being written? With resource monitor your question could probably have much more information in it . .Do you run skype and chome? then this may apply answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware/…
    – Psycogeek
    Commented Aug 18, 2015 at 1:38
  • 1
    Open Resource Monitor (see it on the task manager tab and click to the Disk tab. See if you can figure out what's using the disk.
    – uSlackr
    Commented Aug 18, 2015 at 1:39
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    About the 14%: The average of 100% and 6*0% is 14,28%, so that’s what you’re seeing.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Oct 8, 2016 at 12:52
  • Relevant: superuser.com/questions/747528/why-is-my-disk-at-99-usage-here
    – Dmitry Grigoryev
    Commented Mar 9, 2019 at 10:49

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
1

I have this problem with my new Dell Inspirion 3593 with 8 GB RAM and very fast 512 GB SSD.
Disk usage jumps to 100% and lasts for tens of minutes! During this time, everything is so sluggish, unbearable. Even if I try to reset the computer, it needs more than ten minutes ("Restarting..."). You can make a tea meanwhile, waiting for the response.

There are different suggestions on web . I tried this article: 10 Best Ways to Fix a 100% Disk Usage on Windows 10. None of them did solve the problem completely, although 4th ("Disable Windows Search") helped much.
But the 8th solution (Reset Virtual Memory) gave me the clue.

Namely, Windows 10 has a very strange configuration of Page File. It is configured to manage it automatically, but it has a very low value of 1152 MB!!!

I disabled it and the problem was gone! However, I got another problem: if I start Firefox and Chrome simultaneously, Chrome reports there is no free memory. Task Manager shows that these two programs occupied almost all free RAM. So, it can not work without Page File.

For years Microsoft have been teaching us that Page File size should be between 1.5 and 4 times larger than physical RAM. And what is this on Windows 10? Some crumbs? I don't understand this.

So, the final answer is to set custom Page File size as in this article: How To Manage Virtual Memory (Pagefile) In Windows 10
Note that in this example, there is a 2 GB of RAM and the Page File is adjusted between 3072 MB and 8192 MB.

Conclusion: now I have three users logged in simultaneously, RAM used to the top of it, large Page File, but disk C is 0% used and OS is lightning! Research continues...

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1

There can be many problems.

  1. Windows installation is infected with Virus
  2. Windows has a service that slows the HDD to a crawl
  3. Your HDD has problems and is may be dying

Try booting into safe mode and see if the issue still persists, the problem is likely with the HDD itself.

You can try reinstalling Windows and it will fix first two of the issues. If your HDD is on it way to death, your only option is to get a new one but I suggest invest in a SSD.

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0

I've been getting this very high disk usage for a long period since I've upgraded from Windows8. In my case, it was caused by "Background Intelligent Transfer service". This is a service where you can't simply disable at start up, and have to terminate it via the command prompt in administrator mode

Click on Windows icon > Command Prompt > Right-click > More > Run as Administrator Type -> net stop bits

This should terminate the service mentioned above, and you should see lower disk usage briefly. This issue comes back from time to time. I had to run this periodically when my computer feels slow and verify that the high disk usage is causing it.

Please note, I haven't had to do this recently after a few Windows update. I am currently on "Version 1511 (OS Build 10586.63)"

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  • 1
    While disabling this service might solve the issue, the actual reason for the disk usage, was not actually solved.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 29, 2016 at 21:22
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    The disk usage is caused by this service running high IO on the disk. Terminating the source of this stops the high usage on the disk.
    – Lex
    Commented Jan 29, 2016 at 21:28
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    Except the true solution would be to determine what is using the service in the first place. That way you don't have to disable a service, that should be enable, thus allowing you to keep a system service enabled.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 29, 2016 at 21:29
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The best solution is to upgrade to an SSD. That is the correct solution since Windows 10 hard drive requirements are much higher then previous operating systems. I do 2 or 3 of these a day and it almost always resolves these kinds of issues. The old mechanical hard drives just can't keep up.

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