I have been having this problem for quite a long time. It goes off and on but now its beginning to become more of a nuisance because its happening more often. What happens is my computer locks up, HDD activity goes to 100%, the read and write speed stays at 0, and stays there for 30 seconds to a minute then unlocks and everything is fine. I have tried 3 different HDDs, reinstalled my OS numerous times with both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, all with the same problem. Even on a brand new install with nothing other than the drivers installed it happened. I bought a new HDD, happened when I installed windows onto it too. The only time I have not had it happen is when I am booted into an installation of Linux Mint Debian Edition. I am at a loss, I don't know what else I can do.
UPDATE: I have some more information that could help. I figured out that I can trigger it by opening a lot of tabs at once in Chrome (by closing chrome and opening it with saved tabs) and I can trigger it on my other HDD (my D drive) by loading a virtual machine in VirtualBox off of it. So apparently this could be some hardware issue with my SATA controller or something. On both C and D drives when they do lock up, they lock up for exactly 60 seconds.
Another interesting thing to note is I have occasional bluescreens. After the bluescreen I get freezing the most, it happens really frequently. Then as time goes by the freezing happens less and less until I seem to not trigger it happening at all. Then the next bluescreen it happens again.
Things I have tried:
PC Specs:
CPU: AMD FX-8350
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 6990
Motherboard: Gigabyte 970A-UD3P
Ram: 16GBytes DDR3
OS: Windows 8.1 Professional
Here is the full CPUZ Report
http://pastebin.com/nipKJFBG
Here is an image of what happens.
Update 1:
I was able to catch it happening in Windows Performance Analyzer. I think it may be Google Chrome.
UPDATE: I have some more information that could help. I figured out that I can trigger it by opening a lot of tabs at once in Chrome (by closing chrome and opening it with saved tabs) and I can trigger it on my other HDD (my D drive) by loading a virtual machine in VirtualBox off of it. So apparently this could be some hardware issue with my SATA controller or something. On both C and D drives when they do lock up, they lock up for exactly 60 seconds.
Another interesting thing to note is I have occasional bluescreens. After the bluescreen I get freezing the most, it happens really frequently. Then as time goes by the freezing happens less and less until I seem to not trigger it happening at all. Then the next bluescreen it happens again.
Things I have tried:
Reinstalling Windows
Using a different version of windows
Using a different HDD
Disabling various Windows services (search indexing, anti malware, etc)
Putting PC in high performance mode (it kinda worked when I disabled HDD sleep time)
Check HDD health (crystal disk info)
Ran check disk many many times
Used different SATA cables. (used and brand new)
PC Specs:
CPU: AMD FX-8350
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 6990
Motherboard: Gigabyte 970A-UD3P
Ram: 16GBytes DDR3
OS: Windows 8.1 Professional
Here is the full CPUZ Report
http://pastebin.com/nipKJFBG
Here is an image of what happens.
Update 1:
I was able to catch it happening in Windows Performance Analyzer. I think it may be Google Chrome.