100% Disk Usage: Unknown Issue (Please Help)

[The_2_]

Ok so, about 8 months ago I had a hard drive that would go up to 100% disk usage when I tried to play a higher demanding game.(Ex. Ark: Survival Evolved) It would be fine when playing a lower demanding game. (Counter Strike: Global Offensive) Whenever I tried to run one of those higher demanding games, I would check the task manager. The task manager showed 99- 100% disk usage and then my computer would be slow and eventually crash even when I closed the application that started it in the first place. I previously made a thread on here trying to resolve the problem but was unsuccessful in finding the issue. The problem led to me buying new RAM, configuring the virtual memory, lowering the settings of my games, setting my hard drive to perform for performance instead of being balanced, I disabled windows search and superfetch, I downloaded drivereasy and found all the outdated drivers and updated every single one of them, I scanned my RAM to see if there was an issue with it, I scanned my hard drive to see if it had any bad sectors, I had malwarebytes scan for any viruses, I updated my motherboard's bios, ALL to NO AVAIL. I grew tired of this problem and not being able to figure it out along with the people attempting to assist me on my previous thread drove me to buy a new hard drive altogether. I purchased a 2 Terabyte hard drive and I migrated everything from the old 500 GB hard drive, to the new 2 TB hard drive, including the Windows 10 OS. I figured the old 500 GB hard drive was broken or something in relation to that, so I put it in a closet inside a box. The 2 TB hard drive was smooth. The disk usage was completely fine when I played games (and I was actually able to play games). It was like I completely fixed the problem and then since I was able to play games, I started to torrent games for free and then I had 1.5/ 2 TB occupied in my hard drive with games. It wasn't until recently I started getting 100% disk usage on games and crashing. The same problem with my old 500 GB hard drive has come back to haunt my 2 TB hard drive. When this happened, I followed my old footsteps. I bought a brand new stick of 1x8 GB of RAM. That didn't do anything so I scanned for viruses, checked my hard drive for bad sectors, I reapplied thermal paste onto my cpu, I updated all of my outdated drivers again, and I configured the virtual memory once again. None of the things that I have listed worked at all. Then, I purchased a 120 GB SSD and did a CLEAN installation of Windows 10. After that, I cleared the partition with the OS on the 2 TB hard drive and made the whole thing 1 partition. So now, my SSD is my (C: drive and the 2 TB hard drive is my (E: drive. I tried running a game (The Evil Within 2) and it froze when I got in-game. I checked the task manager and on the "processes" tab I saw that my (E: drive (The 2 TB HDD) was at 100%. I was still able to run any programs that were installed on my SSD though. It seems like this problem is specifically for my 2 TB hard drive. I am in need of assistance for somebody to tell me whats exactly wrong with my HDD or PC. I thank you for taking the time to read through all of this, but right now I am in desperate need for some advice/help.

 

[camieabz]

Ok so, about 8 months ago I had a hard drive that would go up to 100% disk usage when I tried to play a higher demanding game.(Ex. Ark: Survival Evolved) It would be fine when playing a lower demanding game. (Counter Strike: Global Offensive)

Whenever I tried to run one of those higher demanding games, I would check the task manager. The task manager showed 99- 100% disk usage and then my computer would be slow and eventually crash even when I closed the application that started it in the first place.

I previously made a thread on here trying to resolve the problem but was unsuccessful in finding the issue. The problem led to me buying new RAM, configuring the virtual memory, lowering the settings of my games, setting my hard drive to perform for performance instead of being balanced, I disabled windows search and superfetch, I downloaded drivereasy and found all the outdated drivers and updated every single one of them, I scanned my RAM to see if there was an issue with it, I scanned my hard drive to see if it had any bad sectors, I had malwarebytes scan for any viruses, I updated my motherboard's bios, ALL to NO AVAIL.

I grew tired of this problem and not being able to figure it out along with the people attempting to assist me on my previous thread drove me to buy a new hard drive altogether. I purchased a 2 Terabyte hard drive and I migrated everything from the old 500 GB hard drive, to the new 2 TB hard drive, including the Windows 10 OS. I figured the old 500 GB hard drive was broken or something in relation to that, so I put it in a closet inside a box.

The 2 TB hard drive was smooth. The disk usage was completely fine when I played games (and I was actually able to play games). It was like I completely fixed the problem and then since I was able to play games, I started to torrent games for free and then I had 1.5/ 2 TB occupied in my hard drive with games.

It wasn't until recently I started getting 100% disk usage on games and crashing. The same problem with my old 500 GB hard drive has come back to haunt my 2 TB hard drive. When this happened, I followed my old footsteps. I bought a brand new stick of 1x8 GB of RAM. That didn't do anything so I scanned for viruses, checked my hard drive for bad sectors, I reapplied thermal paste onto my cpu, I updated all of my outdated drivers again, and I configured the virtual memory once again. None of the things that I have listed worked at all. Then, I purchased a 120 GB SSD and did a CLEAN installation of Windows 10.

After that, I cleared the partition with the OS on the 2 TB hard drive and made the whole thing 1 partition. So now, my SSD is my (C: drive and the 2 TB hard drive is my (E: drive. I tried running a game (The Evil Within 2) and it froze when I got in-game. I checked the task manager and on the "processes" tab I saw that my (E: drive (The 2 TB HDD) was at 100%. I was still able to run any programs that were installed on my SSD though. It seems like this problem is specifically for my 2 TB hard drive. I am in need of assistance for somebody to tell me whats exactly wrong with my HDD or PC. I thank you for taking the time to read through all of this, but right now I am in desperate need for some advice/help.

(For those of us that prefer paragraphs.)

"100% disk usage on games" ??

Stop configuring things. Stop disabling things. Superfetch works if you leave it alone. Setup a swapfile to have a minimum fixed size of 512MB (0.5GB) and no maximum. You've done so much tinkering with this setup to solve the problem, that there's no baseline to measure from.

Some suggestions:

- Clean install Windows (wipe the slate and start over).

- Get your drivers from the mobo site, gfx site, and so on, and leave driver sites / programs well alone. I suggest the most recent versions from the vendor sites, (e.g. gfx drivers from gfx card vendor, rather than latest gfx drivers). They might not be uber-up to date, but they'll probably be more likely to not be the cause of the problem.

- Perhaps disable *unnecessary* services, such as search, but leave all the others running until you establish a stable installation. Windows Update: I disable it, and check manually, to prevent MS changing my drivers without my vetting them first.

- Stay away from your torrent sites until you've been able to establish that you don't have any malware.

- If you decide to install any game (ever; not just in this setup), always check with CCleaner what little extras were installed. The uninstall page has an install date, so it's easy to spot add-ons.

For example, with World of Tanks, you get Overwolf. Whether it's needed or not, is down to the gamer. Other games force install of useless crap, that just bloats the system. Many insist on running at startup. Again, CCleaner can be used to thin down the startup list on these, on unwanted scheduled tasks and so on.

It wouldn't hurt to post your full system spec too, including taking a reading of system CPU / RAM usage 5-10 minutes after startup.

 

[The_2_]

Ok so, about 8 months ago I had a hard drive that would go up to 100% disk usage when I tried to play a higher demanding game.(Ex. Ark: Survival Evolved) It would be fine when playing a lower demanding game. (Counter Strike: Global Offensive)

Whenever I tried to run one of those higher demanding games, I would check the task manager. The task manager showed 99- 100% disk usage and then my computer would be slow and eventually crash even when I closed the application that started it in the first place.

I previously made a thread on here trying to resolve the problem but was unsuccessful in finding the issue. The problem led to me buying new RAM, configuring the virtual memory, lowering the settings of my games, setting my hard drive to perform for performance instead of being balanced, I disabled windows search and superfetch, I downloaded drivereasy and found all the outdated drivers and updated every single one of them, I scanned my RAM to see if there was an issue with it, I scanned my hard drive to see if it had any bad sectors, I had malwarebytes scan for any viruses, I updated my motherboard's bios, ALL to NO AVAIL.

I grew tired of this problem and not being able to figure it out along with the people attempting to assist me on my previous thread drove me to buy a new hard drive altogether. I purchased a 2 Terabyte hard drive and I migrated everything from the old 500 GB hard drive, to the new 2 TB hard drive, including the Windows 10 OS. I figured the old 500 GB hard drive was broken or something in relation to that, so I put it in a closet inside a box.

The 2 TB hard drive was smooth. The disk usage was completely fine when I played games (and I was actually able to play games). It was like I completely fixed the problem and then since I was able to play games, I started to torrent games for free and then I had 1.5/ 2 TB occupied in my hard drive with games.

It wasn't until recently I started getting 100% disk usage on games and crashing. The same problem with my old 500 GB hard drive has come back to haunt my 2 TB hard drive. When this happened, I followed my old footsteps. I bought a brand new stick of 1x8 GB of RAM. That didn't do anything so I scanned for viruses, checked my hard drive for bad sectors, I reapplied thermal paste onto my cpu, I updated all of my outdated drivers again, and I configured the virtual memory once again. None of the things that I have listed worked at all. Then, I purchased a 120 GB SSD and did a CLEAN installation of Windows 10.

After that, I cleared the partition with the OS on the 2 TB hard drive and made the whole thing 1 partition. So now, my SSD is my (C: drive and the 2 TB hard drive is my (E: drive. I tried running a game (The Evil Within 2) and it froze when I got in-game. I checked the task manager and on the "processes" tab I saw that my (E: drive (The 2 TB HDD) was at 100%. I was still able to run any programs that were installed on my SSD though. It seems like this problem is specifically for my 2 TB hard drive. I am in need of assistance for somebody to tell me whats exactly wrong with my HDD or PC. I thank you for taking the time to read through all of this, but right now I am in desperate need for some advice/help.

(For those of us that prefer paragraphs.)

"100% disk usage on games" ??

Stop configuring things. Stop disabling things. Superfetch works if you leave it alone. Setup a swapfile to have a minimum fixed size of 512MB (0.5GB) and no maximum. You've done so much tinkering with this setup to solve the problem, that there's no baseline to measure from.

Some suggestions:

- Clean install Windows (wipe the slate and start over).

- Get your drivers from the mobo site, gfx site, and so on, and leave driver sites / programs well alone. I suggest the most recent versions from the vendor sites, (e.g. gfx drivers from gfx card vendor, rather than latest gfx drivers). They might not be uber-up to date, but they'll probably be more likely to not be the cause of the problem.

- Perhaps disable *unnecessary* services, such as search, but leave all the others running until you establish a stable installation. Windows Update: I disable it, and check manually, to prevent MS changing my drivers without my vetting them first.

- Stay away from your torrent sites until you've been able to establish that you don't have any malware.

- If you decide to install any game (ever; not just in this setup), always check with CCleaner what little extras were installed. The uninstall page has an install date, so it's easy to spot add-ons.

For example, with World of Tanks, you get Overwolf. Whether it's needed or not, is down to the gamer. Other games force install of useless crap, that just bloats the system. Many insist on running at startup. Again, CCleaner can be used to thin down the startup list on these, on unwanted scheduled tasks and so on.

It wouldn't hurt to post your full system spec too, including taking a reading of system CPU / RAM usage 5-10 minutes after startup.

My specs are:

CPU: Intel I5 2500
Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce 1050ti
HDD: Toshiba 2 TB
SSD: Kingston 120 GB
RAM: Patriot Viper 3 Series DDR3 1x8GB
Motherboard: Asus - P8H61-M LE/CSM R2.0 Micro ATX LGA1155
Power Supply: ThermalTake 600 Watt
OS: Windows 10

So is my best choice just to wipe my whole 2 TB HDD and have a clean slate like you said? My OS is on the SSD and I installed it on there like last week. I have no issues with the SSD, just the HDD.