Hard disk 100% usage problem

[skullcruncher]

Hello everyone,

I will try to explain this as clear as possible and will go through all the details that I tried to solve this. This began rather anonymously from what I remember, and I seem to be having my HDD at 100% usage constantly or randomly, when opening any program or when playing games. I bought a new HDD 2 months ago (Seagate Barracuda SATA 3, 2 terabytes) and installed windows 10 on it.

It was working as intended for 2 weeks or so, and after a while, the 100% usage begins for no obvious reasons. The thing is even though Task Manager shows small programs that run on everyone's computers, mine is constantly at 100% when doing something or even when I'm idle just waiting for it to stop, it doesn't even show what program is using the disk that makes it at full load. At the time I was also getting random MEMORY_MANAGEMENT blue screens of death during gaming or simply browsing or doing my projects. The weirdest thing is since this HDD was bought 2 months ago, it makes an uncomfortable clicking noise each time it reaches or stays at 100%, it really sounds like the HDD is torturing itself for no specific reason.

I have tried numerous things and I will count them down. I tried doing the Windows Memory Diagnostic and it showed a great result with no errors, moving on. I tried Changing SATA cables and ports but nothing happened. I tried installing windows 7 but the 100% usage still persisted and the clicking noises were there as well. I turned off all the unnecessary Windows Services such as Superfetch, Windows search and many more, but to no avail. I tried formatting the whole new HDD to freshly install windows 10 and that worked for 2 weeks until it began to reach 100% load again as always. I ran Malwarebytes antivirus to check for threats, but everything seems in order. I used CrystalDiskInfo and CrystalDiskMark to check if the new HDD is failing for some reason, but everything is working as it should. On the other hand, the GPU drivers seemed to have problems as well. When Windows 10 was freshly installed, the Nvidia drivers refused to install, claiming that the installation has failed for some reason (?). I did some digging but nothing helped on how to fix it. Strangely enough, the drivers did install after a while of messing around on my PC. Even further into this whole mess, when playing a game or browsing my sounds become distorted and stuck on the same frequency which happened randomly, I believe the sounds get stuck once the HDD experiences the 100% load and it receives a temporary "shock". I know that the PSU is not a problem because I get BSOD, the PC doesn't get shut down due to lacking power. I was playing games yesterday and the 100% usage began again but it wasn't slow or anything really. Today I powered up my PC and I get BSOD, slow performance and my GPU drivers failed, they won't even install anymore because of that error that I mentioned earlier.

I really need help because this has gone too far, I've spent if not 50 hours altogether just trying to fix this but I can't find the problem. My BIOS is clean and optimized, even resetting it to factory settings didn't help. Removing RAM sticks also didn't help at all. Thank you for reading, I know that it's too long for you to read, but this is all that I can explain what I did, checked and tried fixing.

My specs:

Motherboard - AsRock Z77 Extreme4
CPU - i7-2700K (OCed to 4.0 GHz)
RAM - 2x4 DDR3, 1600 MHz
GPU - GTX 650 Asus Edition 1GB
PSU - 500W

Thank you for your time, I really hope that we can work this out!

 

[Ralston18]

Rethink the 500 watt PSU: Make and model, age, condition?

PSU problems do not automatically shut down the PC. A problem with one of the output voltages may cause a shutdown.

Your system appears to be having quite a mix of errors and problems. In my mind the PSU becomes the prime suspect.

Are you able to get into Reliability History at all?

Look for yellow warning codes and red error icons. Especially those that occur just before or at the time of some error.

See what you can find and post accordingly.,

 

[skullcruncher]

Yes sorry, the PSU is NaviaTEC 500W, but I can hardly see that it is a problem because it served me well even 4-5 years from when I first bought it. About the reliability history, it shows many random critical errors. Windows shut down unexpectedly, Windows hardware error, Windows was not properly shut down, Nvidia Web Helper Service and Nvidia Share have stopped working and many more others. from 24. August to 13. September, there seem to be overall 66 errors during that time. 24. August was when I freshly installed Windows 10 on the newly formatted HDD. Some of the errors were simply caused by the BSOD. This might be no help at all, but it's at least something for now.

 

[Ralston18]

Power supplies can fail for any number of reasons:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/why-power-supplies-fail-psus,36712.html

And yes, a good PSU can serve very well for many years but then can degrade slowly. And usually while being asked to provide more power for additional components; a 2nd drive, more RAM, new GPU.

What the PSU is capable of doing gets close to or goes below the threshold of what it is being asked to do. Problems start at that point. Older PSUs are less likely to hold up.

Additional links:

https://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/powersupplysysteminstability.aspx

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-deal-with-a-dead-or-dying-power-supply-1826603283

BSODs do not generate errors. BSOD's are the result of an software error or hardware problem.

That is why I look for errors etc., that occur just before or at the time of the BSODs.

 

[skullcruncher]

Okay PSU it is then, I will take few days to replace the current PSU with another better one (eVGA 500W) and let you know if that did the trick.

Thank you for your information and help Ralston18, I'll post an update on this issue in the upcoming days.

 

[skullcruncher]

I think it's safe to say that it was the PSU, there are no more driver failures, BSODs, HDD weird noises and hitting up to 100% constantly. I somehow knew that it was the PSU, due to its age and unfamiliar maker which was confirmed by Ralston18. Thanks mate, you made someone very happy indeed and I hope these unusual events never come back!