Drive at 100% usage in one case, 30% in another?

Garish

Commendable
Dec 11, 2016
4
0
1,510
So recently my hard drive in my Alienware x51 has begun to suddenly spike to 100% upon startup or whenever starting any type of application. I had a spare drive and when I swapped them out, the new drive also said it was hitting 100% usage. I plugged the HDD from the Alienware x51 into my other, older PC, a Dell Inspiron 580, and it only hit 30% usage at max when I tried moving files from one hard drive to another.

Any ideas on what the issue might be?
 
Solution
Try reinstalling or updating the drivers for your system. Check if there's a new available OS update (if it's an known OS update issue, a fix might have been released).

You could also try disabling some of the OS services which are usually associated with high disk usage, such as Superfetch, Prefetch and BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service).
Hi Garish.

Good job with the troubleshooting! The fact that the same thing happens with a different HDD as well and that the drive in question is OK when connected to a different computer might mean that there's a connection issue. So try the "problematic" HDD with a different SATA port and cables, to see if the same thing happens again.
If that doesn't help, perhaps you could also try resetting/updating your BIOS/UEFI, to see if it changes anything. Also make sure that the motherboard associated drivers are all up to date.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD
 


Hey Boogieman_WD.

So, I tried updating several things on my Alienware x51 R2, such as the BIOS and drivers, however upon a computer restart, there seems to be no difference. I've even tried switching out the SATA cables with the ones I've used in the other computer but I still seem to get the 100% disk usage upon startup. Any other suggestions?

 


I tried it and it did not seem to change anything. I think the issue might be hardware related, but I'm not 100% sure yet.
 
Were the operating systems you've tried the drives with different, or were they both the same with the same updates? If they were different, it could be OS related as @Colif has mentioned, if you have system restore points which you can revert to (e.g. before the last Windows update) you could give it a try. Note that you should backup everything which you've installed after the date of the restore point.
Other than that you could get in touch with the computer manufacturer's customer support and explain your situation, to see if it might be something related to your mobo.

You could also test the drive for errors and/or bad sectors via its manufacturer's diagnostic tool, just to see if anything out of the ordinary pops-up. Although it would be a bit surprising having in mind that the same thing happened with a different HDD and that this one worked fine with a different computer.

Please keep us posted.
 


They were both running the same updates, yes. Unfortunately I do not have any system restore points either, a dump move on my part. I plan on trying to contact Alienware/ Dell soon, but in the time while I was trying to solve the problem, I started opening up Resource Monitor. I found that C:\Windows\System32\config\DRIVERS pops up on the top of the list very often when I'm idling, occasionally jumping to the top and boosting my disk usage up to 10. Another thing that comes up is C:\ System Volume Information, whatever that is supposed to be.
 
Try reinstalling or updating the drivers for your system. Check if there's a new available OS update (if it's an known OS update issue, a fix might have been released).

You could also try disabling some of the OS services which are usually associated with high disk usage, such as Superfetch, Prefetch and BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service).
 
Solution