Question 100% disk usage while doing any task

[Sharontje]

Allo fellow forum users,

Since a few weeks my mother's pc has been running into some problems: the disk usage is 100% ALOT of the time, which I feel like isn't normal since my own pc is mostly running between 0-20% max. It could be from just opening & using internet, opening a folder or playing a video game, literally anything. The pc is very slow with opening applications or encountering lag spikes in games, that ran perfectly before.
In Task Manager it often shows the 'System' service running at 3.0 MB/s making the disk usage 100%, sometimes even 35 MB/s while there is nothing running. Same goes for some other services. When opening, for example, Firefox the disk usage immediately spikes from 0% to 100%.

I've made some pictures from Task Manager:
Task Manager 1
Task Manager 2
Task Manager 3

I have googled for solutions before making this post and the things I've already tried are:

• Restarting the PC
• Checking for Windows updates & disk drivers
• Disk cleanup
• Checking for disk errors using cmd
• Sfc /scannow in cmd which found corrupted files and repaired it
• Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth in cmd
• Disabled Superfetch
• Reset virtual memory
• Cleared up the 'Temp' folder
• Disabling Antivirus

But sadly none of this has helped so far.

PC specs:
GPU: Radeon RX 470
CPU: i3-7100
RAM: 8 gb
HDD: WDC WD10EZEX-22MFCA0 (932 GB)
She bought this pre-built pc about 3 years ago, bought a new GPU and PSU in 2022.

Does anybody know why this problem occurs and possibly knows any solutions? Could it be that the HDD is failing and might need to upgrade?
Thank you for your help in advance!! 😊

 

[punkncat]

I would consider taking the opportunity to buy a 2.5" SSD, migrate a fresh install to it and convert the HDD to storage.
If it still does so after this would rule out an issue caused by the disk or possible virus/etc.

 

[NedSmelly]

I suspect a combination of the hard drive and RAM size. Slow HDD data transfers + virtual memory / swap file access. Probably running out of memory (how many tabs are open on Firefox?).

Swapping to an SSD + adding an extra 8GB RAM should sort things out.

 

[Sharontje]

Thank you for your replies.
If I would upgrade to a SSD, would you recommend buying 2x 500gb or 1x 1 TB? I would like to seperate the OS to improve performance. Or is it possible that I could make the 1 TB into partitions and locate the OS in there?

Firefox is only running 1 tab and it already spikes to 100%. No background applications.

 

[NedSmelly]

There’s no practical performance advantage to partitioning an SSD. They don’t fragment like a hard drive.

 

[geofelt]

Separating drives does nothing for performance and will complicate space management.
Replacing the os can not be done independently of apps since the apps use the registry.
Better to take occasional user checkpoints in case you get a bad update.
And devise an external back up system for both the os and data.

A ssd upgrade will be magical.
Buy the 1 or 2tb 2.5" ssd.
If you buy a samsung ssd, use their ssd migration aid to move your C drive.
Trivially easy.
App and instructions here:

Tool & Software Download | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Download various software related to your product, including Samsung Magician, designed for use with Samsung's memory products, and find related information.

semiconductor.samsung.com

When done, repurpose your hard drive for external backup.

8gb is insufficient.
Any usage is likely to cause hard page faults and considerable demand on the page file.
A hard page fault stops the app dead until the fault can be resolved.
That takes considerable time on a HDD.
Look at task manager/resource monitor.
Select the memory tab and look at the hard fault column.
If you see anything north of zero, you can use more ram.
Buy a compatible 2 x 8gb or 2 x 16gb ram upgrade kit.

 

[Sharontje]

Much appreciate the help! I will look into getting a new SSD and RAM 😊
Hopefully it will be fixed.