Disk usage high very frequently is this an HDD issue or CPU issue?

[motchiesabres]

Hello, I built a gaming pc around 2 years ago and lately I have been getting 100% or close to 100 disk usage pretty consistantly. Its gotten to the point where I get frame drops where the screen freezes in fortnite when I used to be able to stream and get 80 frames in a city in PUBg. It will spike when I first open something or while playing a game. I have uninstalled and reinstalled windows and this helped for about a month but then it came back and started to have the same issue. I was about to get a new HDD but then I notices that when I launch google chrome my CPU usage jumps to 50-60% then goes back down to 5-10% after like 5 seconds. I didnt know if this was normal or if my CPU is actually the reason for the bad performance.

In short, if the HDD the root cause of this issue or is there something wrong with my CPU?

I have an i5-4690k

 

[antonio.parrot]

look at event manager for a clue.
change the sata cables or try another sata connector.

 

[mdd1963]

opening applications on conventional spinning drives that are 3/4th full can be an exercise in patience sometimes....

Find a 500-1000 GB SSD, and see what you have been missing...

(streaming with an i5 while gaming is not helping, as you are hardly loaded up with extra threads/processing power there...)

 

[prince_xaine]

Things to try:

- Use a Disk Cache. Take some extra RAM and make it into cache. It doesn't have to be a lot, just enough for the cache to increase read/write speeds.
Program: Primocache.

- Disable Windows Search, Superfetch, antivirus. (Just google how to disable them.)

- When installing Windows, it is better to create a smaller partition (80GB - 100GB) for the system, and then create a seperate partition and leave it empty. This helps the system files stay in a smaller group, thus decreasing the time it takes to reach data. If you can't run a second HDD, or don't have an extra one, you can use the second partition. Just note when writing between partitions, it could take more time than if you use just one partition.

Note: The reason for the spike in CPU usage when you open a program is just that, it needs to load all of the application resources so it will consume a bit for a second. You'd know if you had an issue with your CPU.

Note 2: an i5 Processor like said above is not meant for multi-tasking. They are powerful processors, you can even game with them, but they don't do well when running more than 2-3 applications. Here is a list of CPUs that match your socket type (LGA1150): https://www.cpubenchmark.net/socketType.html#id7


Hope all of this information helps.