100% disk usage Windows 10

J

Joellee96

Member
Chassis & Display
Cosmos Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i5 Quad Core Processor 6300HQ (2.3GHz, 3.2GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
8GB HyperX IMPACT 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 940MX - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
Memory - Hard Disk
1TB SLIM SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor
1 x 90W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema 2
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-8260 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) +BT 4.0, vPRO
USB Options
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Battery
Cosmos Series 3 Cell Prismatic Battery Pack (48WH)
Keyboard Language
COSMOS SERIES BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
DVD Recovery Media
NO DVD RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MP FULL HD WEBCAM

Recently bought this spec about 2 weeks ago as a Christmas gift. It didn't come with windows as I had already purchased my own and digitally downloaded it to my USB. before installing my own copy of Windows the laptop already came with a test version of windows for PC specialist to test the software drives etc. this computer is brand new, nothing installed after a clean install of windows except what it comes with. 100 Disk usage occurs almost every 5-10 minutes and it is unbearable. I've literally went from forum after forum looking at suggestions such as disabling Windows defender, superfetch, Windows Search, notifications etc. I'm out of ideas after trying a week to fix it.as I'm typing this I have 100% disk usage. I have no apps running and background processes show no more than 0.1-0.4mb/s usage. any suggestions would be much appreciated I am desperate at this point.
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
First off, don't disable services just because someone tells you to on a website, I would suggest that you re-enable everything you disabled because you might well be making your problem worse. There is a lot of misinformation out there about features like Superfetch (which doesn't cause performance problems) and few people properly understand how RAM is allocated and used.

100% disk usage isn't normal but neither is it likely to be caused by a Windows configuration option. One common cause of high disk usage is system paging, caused by RAM exhaustion, but that''s unlikely in your case since you have 8GB installed.

The first thing to do is to find out what's actually going on before you start changing anything. The quick way to see what is using your disk is to open the Task Manager, leave the Processes tab selected and click on the heading labelled Disk. That will sort the processes by disk usage so that the one at the top is the one contributing most to disk usage. What process is that? Post an image if you like.

Whilst you have the Task Manager open take a look at Memory (RAM) use. Click on Memory to sort the processes on that column and see which one(s) are at the top. As I said, what you describe could be RAM exhaustion so we need to check to see whether it is.

If you want more detail open up the Windows Resource Monitor (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Resource Monitor). Click the arrow to expand the disk section and then click on the Total (B/sec) heading to sort the processes by that column, again the one(s) at the top are using your disk the most. What processes is that? Post an image if you like.

If you think you might be exhausting RAM expand the Memory section and click on the Working Set (KB) header. That will sort the processes on RAM usage. What process(es) are at the top?

You do have a fairly slow disk there so any high disk activity is going to be noticeable, but what you're seeing doesn't sound like normal behaviour.
 
Last edited:
J

Joellee96

Member
Sorry for the extremely late reply I've worked Christmas and Christmas eve this is the first time since I've touched the laptop since opening the thread so sorry about that. This high disk usage usually comes from startup but switching on the laptop to eventually logging in takes up to 2 minutes and the disk usage stays for 5 minutes after booting. I've noticed opening any applications sky rockets it back up to 100%. If no applications are running and the computer is idle random spikes of 100% usage occur and fluctuate up and down anything between 60-100%. I installed all the drives from my driver disk provided by PC specialist. I ran a Malwarebytes scan selecting all the options including Rootkit as recommended off a previous thread which lasted nearly 4 hours with no viruses found. regarding resource manager I'll try and get a picture when idling when 100% disk usage occurs. thanks for the help guys! merry Christmas
 
W

Wozza63

Biblical Poster
This may just be a very slow disk. How old is the laptop? Check your startup list in the Task Manager as well and disable any programs that you don't want at startup. A surprising number of programs needlessly include themselves at startup and are continuously running in the background. Some programs can make a huge difference.
 
J

Joellee96

Member
It is a brand new laptop I got a week before Christmas. I've had it since 18th December. I'm edging towards it just being a rubbish disk but I've had slower disks with windows 10 but no 100 disk usage so I'm lost for ideas. resource manager.pngresource manager.png
 
W

Wozza63

Biblical Poster
Well if you fear its a bad disk run a benchmark with CrystalDiskMark and post the screenshot here. For a mechanical laptop drive you're probably looking for at least 100MB/s read and write performance.
 
J

Joellee96

Member
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 5.2.0 x64 (UWP) (C) 2007-2016 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 119.151 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 111.179 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.322 MB/s [ 322.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.367 MB/s [ 333.7 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 135.472 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 134.494 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.516 MB/s [ 126.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.447 MB/s [ 353.3 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [C: 2.5% (23.6/929.3 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/12/26 18:02:25
OS : Windows 10 [10.0 Build 14393] (x64)
jut tested it then what do you think of the results?
 
W

Wozza63

Biblical Poster
Seems to be ok. Not the greatest speeds in the world but are above 100MB/s. Have you checked to see what programs are using the hard drive when it is at 100% by using the task manager? And also disabled any unwanted startup programs?
 
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