Access to my secondary hard drive runs explorer.exe to 100%CPU usage

[Skozlowski]

Not every time, but more frequently lately, when I go into windows explorer and navigete to my E: drive (4TB WD Black where I store all of my work) the explorer.exe runs up to 100% CPU usage. Also when I use the built in outlook app (which I have been since I got this machine 3 yrs ago) and try to attatch a file to an email from E: it runs PickerHost.exe up to 100% CPU usage.
Thi is leading me to believe that there is something wrong with my hard drive but I son't know much about that. I ran all sorts of antivirus, spyware, defragments, troubleshooters, and a System File Scan all in safe mode and still cameup with nothing. Can anyone tell me whats going on here?

 

[wpgwpg]

Obviously that shouldn't be happening. Start File Explorer, right-click the drive and click Properties. Then click the TOOLS tab and click CHECK -> Scan drive. It may require a reboot and run for a good while.

Good luck.

 

[Skozlowski]

Just tried it, dialogue said that there where no errors on the disk so I went ahead and scanned it with a third party antivirus (malewarebytes) and got nothing either. The disk says it is 0% fragmented, just checked and figured thats good info. Still searching for ideas!

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Skozlowski,

Sorry that you are facing some issues with your WD drive. 🙁

Is this an OS one or a secondary drive?
My suggestion would be to back up the most important data stored on the drive. You should always keep the data you can't afford to loose stored on at least two places anyway.

After that, you can do something simple as just attaching the drive with different cables(both SATA and power ones) to a different SATA port.
Another thing you can do is to test the drive with WD's DLG tool. Run both short and extended tests on the drive: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=hXJHc7

Is the drive under warranty?

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[Skozlowski]

D_Know_WD,
I have automatic backups and a lot of them, i ran the quick test from WD and found nothing. the extended scan is still running. The drive is a secondary. I thought maybe it oculd be something as simple as using another SATA port but i haven't tried it yet. If the problem persists after the extensive scan i will try that next.

 

[Skozlowski]

D_Know_WD,
I ran the extensive scan, that was a long 7 hours. But it didn't come back with anything. I tried pulling the SATA cable and attaching it to a new port but that didn't do anything for me either. Any other ideas? This is starting to make work very frustrating...

 

[D_Know_WD]

Well, in that case, most probably your HDD is in a healthy state. So you have tried using both different SATA and power cables right?
It's funny that when I just googled this .exe, it was associated with some viruses. Have you scanned both your drives for viruses/malware?

D_Know_WD

 

[Skozlowski]

No, I just tried new SATA ports. I will have to pick up a couple extra cables tonight and try them tomorrow. Yes, I do system wide maleware and virus scans every other day at the least. I will do some now and dedicate them to the specific hard drive to see if it comes up with anything else. I also ran antivirus and maleware scans in safe mode before i posted here.