Question 100% disk usage all of a sudden??

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Mar 17, 2025
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Older (spec'd) gaming pc (the actual pc itself is only a year old more or less). Core i7-4790, win10, 32gb ddr3, gtx1660s, 1tb sata ssd. only used for Forza Horizon 4 and 5.

For months I have had 0 issues playing either game. Over past week now my disk usage has spiked to 100% while playing causing textures to completely stop loading and the game to crash. GPU drivers updated, windows updated.

So far I have re-installed both games, reinstalled windows, created a sep partition in my ssd to move the games to, tried turning off all background processes, turned off windows defender (to test only), run checkdisk and other tools that all return no issues with drive itself, set frame rates to cap at 60fps on nvidia control panel, didsabled all startup apps, and probably a bunch of other ideas i've found on the web.

The most baffling part is the fact that everything worked fine for so long then out of nowhere it failed. No new programs downloaded, no new hardware, didn't happen after a windows update. My cpu usage varies while playing from 60-80%, memory never goes above 20%, and gpu hovers around 50-70% mostly while playing.

I have not touched the SATA cable at all to loosen it or anything like that. I guess the ask is, how do I definitively figure out what happened or what is causing this all of a sudden? I don't want to throw $$ at an older set up, and I'm not really in the position to drop a couple grand on a new set up.

Another odd issue, maybe related, maybe not, is with Horizon 4. When I am loading the game, as the loading screen is playing the animation, it will spike the disk usage to 100% and it causes my pc itself to reboot. Horizon 5 will load fine and play for a while until the disk spikes and then it may freeze the game, but never reboots my pc.

I'll take any ideas or thoughts you guys may have. I'm at a loss at this point of where to turn next. At this point I just have a colorful paperweight since the only thing I need the pc for is those 2 games. Everything else works fine. All programs and apps run great. Thank you!
 
I bit the bullet and ordered a Samsung 870 evo 1tb drive. I'll know Monday. Even though the utilities say my existing ssd is okay, everything in me feels like the ssd is the issue. Worst case, I have another ssd I can use on any pc.
New question. Got my new ssd today, new problem. No additional power cables on my power supply. Just the one currently in use. Would I be able to use a USB to sata adapter? Or would that not allow my games to run properly from that ssd?
 
New question. Got my new ssd today, new problem. No additional power cables on my power supply. Just the one currently in use. Would I be able to use a USB to sata adapter? Or would that not allow my games to run properly from that ssd?
If you go ext with the new ssd your going to muddy the water.

Consider a clone from old to new then replace old with new.
 
No additional power cables on my power supply. Just the one currently in use.
What model PSU has only a single sata power cable?
That doesn't sound believable.

Anyway - there are splitters/ adapters for this.

molex to sata adapter
AVimg_28067.jpg


sata power y splitter cable
pyo2sata.main.jpg
 
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What model PSU has only a single sata power cable?
That doesn't sound believable.


Stg aubron 500w crapbox....

For now I just swapped the drives. There are 2 empty molex connectors, but the only 2 sata cables are 1 to ssd and 1 to my fan controller.

I'm not sure I'll need to reintroduce the old ssd. This Samsung 870 evo launched fh5, a more demanding title and was using 4% disk!!!


Somehow, even with repeatedly testing fine, the old ssd was bad. Simple as that.
 
If you go ext with the new ssd your going to muddy the water.

Consider a clone from old to new then replace old with new.
Exactly what I did. Took some tinkering to get wifi drivers for my card from old ssd so when I launched into new one I could update and get internet back. But once that was done and a bunch of updating, all seems fine!