Not quite sure why my "Disk" in Task Manager goes to 100% while the CPU and Memory is under 30%

[Zsmith11]

Randomly at times my computer will start to freeze up, and as anyone would. I go on my Task Manager and check what is causing this issue. What I see everytime it says "System and under the Disk section it says "11MB/s" which I assume is too much for my PC to handle. I am using Windows 8 at the moment.

Not sure if that helps or not, but basically I think this is a fixable problem and I am looking to the experts at Tomshardware to pity me enough to spend a few moments to perhaps solve my newbie question.

I'd appreciate any effort in helping me correct this issue!

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, Zsmith11.

The Disk usage spikes can be caused by a lot of things. Do you have any observation if this happens while you're doing something in particular?
This could be due to a faulty SATA cable, virus, OS services, installed software, HDD problems etc. First of all I'd recommend that you backup your data, just to be on the safe side. After that go ahead and download the manufacturer's diagnostic tool to test the drive and see what's the situation with it. After that, depending on the results we'll figure out how to proceed.

Please keep me posted.
Boogieman_WD