PC Hard-drive 100% usage cant find solution.

[Tomdude006]

Hi, so basically my computer has 100% disk usage and i cant find a solution. I have stopped super-fetch windows update etc. But the 100% still persists. Sometimes it will lower, i do this by ending avg and some windows named things (like windows compatibility or something like that) but it in the end rises again. Sometimes if i leave it, it will just lower on its own i really have no idea. I have a feeling this is causing my pc to crash as i will sometimes be watching youtube and my pc will just crash and restart. I have had a few problems with this pc in the past with crashing which i think was to do with the GPU, i went into the MSI afterburner and under clocked it which seemed to sort the problem although this crash only happened on games, this sometimes still happens when MSI afterburner resets its settings and i have to under clock it again, so far this crash has happened twice in two days both times i have either been watching twitch or youtube, surprisingly it has been around the same time on both days, throughout the day i go on games, then go off them and keeping doing that throughout the day, the crash happens averagely around 5 pm which is after about 8 hours of usage.

Any help will be appreciated.

 

[dgingeri]

Look in the event log under system events, particularly look for SATA resets or bad sector entries. If you get either, copy your data off the drive as soon as possible, as the drive is failing.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Check the "resource monitor" under the disk tab. It should show which process is using the drive.

I had a very similar problem recently though I doubt it's your problem, but I'll list it just in case. Mozilla Thunderbird had a corrupt profile. The computer would utilize 100% CPU trying to read the file. This is what I thought was odd about it... obviously Mozilla didn't include a timeout. It just tries forever. Also, I moved the profile to the desktop assuming it would timeout looking for the file. It must scan the drive for the file, because it still found it (listed in resource monitor). Even more amazing, is I uninstalled thunderbird and rebooted. On startup, the computer still searched indefinately for that profile. The fix was to delete the profile folder and reinstall thunderbird. No more disk issues after that.

 

[Tomdude006]

Check the "resource monitor" under the disk tab. It should show which process is using the drive.

I had a very similar problem recently though I doubt it's your problem, but I'll list it just in case. Mozilla Thunderbird had a corrupt profile. The computer would utilize 100% CPU trying to read the file. This is what I thought was odd about it... obviously Mozilla didn't include a timeout. It just tries forever. Also, I moved the profile to the desktop assuming it would timeout looking for the file. It must scan the drive for the file, because it still found it (listed in resource monitor). Even more amazing, is I uninstalled thunderbird and rebooted. On startup, the computer still searched indefinately for that profile. The fix was to delete the profile folder and reinstall thunderbird. No more disk issues after that.

Well surprisingly i installed Mozilla Thunderbird about a week ago, i dont use it much so i will uninstall it now, ill keep pick you as the solution if i find it makes a difference, cheers.

 

[Tomdude006]

Look in the event log under system events, particularly look for SATA resets or bad sector entries. If you get either, copy your data off the drive as soon as possible, as the drive is failing.

I cant find anything saying that but im not sure im looking in the right place :/ im in the "event viewer" and im not to sure where im looking

 

[dgingeri]

Look in the event log under system events, particularly look for SATA resets or bad sector entries. If you get either, copy your data off the drive as soon as possible, as the drive is failing.

I cant find anything saying that but im not sure im looking in the right place :/ im in the "event viewer" and im not to sure where im looking

In Event Viewer, under Windows Logs, go to the System log. scroll through it for yellow and red flagged events. The SATA resets will be in yellow while bad sectors will have red flags. There will be other types if yellow and red flagged items, and those might give you some ideas about other causes of this, so look carefully.

 

[Tomdude006]

Look in the event log under system events, particularly look for SATA resets or bad sector entries. If you get either, copy your data off the drive as soon as possible, as the drive is failing.

I cant find anything saying that but im not sure im looking in the right place :/ im in the "event viewer" and im not to sure where im looking

In Event Viewer, under Windows Logs, go to the System log. scroll through it for yellow and red flagged events. The SATA resets will be in yellow while bad sectors will have red flags. There will be other types if yellow and red flagged items, and those might give you some ideas about other causes of this, so look carefully.

I cant see anything like that in there, do you have any other solutions?

 

[dgingeri]

When you look in event viewer, there is a section under that that says "Windows Logs". Click to expand that. Then, under that, there will be a log labeled System. Click that to open it in the main pane.

 

[Hawkeye22]

The event viewer will show errors, but won't list files in use. The resource monitor's disk tab will show which processes are using which files.

 

[dgingeri]

The event viewer will show SATA resets and bad sector encounters by the OS. That's the main thing we're looking for right now. I'm willing to bet that either of those is the cause. SATA resets mean the controller on the drive or on the motherboard, or the cable, is going bad. Bad sector encounters mean the drive is definitely going bad.

 

[Hawkeye22]

The event viewer will show SATA resets and bad sector encounters by the OS. That's the main thing we're looking for right now. I'm willing to bet that either of those is the cause. SATA resets mean the controller on the drive or on the motherboard, or the cable, is going bad. Bad sector encounters mean the drive is definitely going bad.

I'm not sure either of those would cause 100% disk usage.

 

[dgingeri]

On my work machine, I would get constant SATA resets, which would show in the task manager as drive activity of 100% with 0 MB/s transfer rate for several seconds, along with the hard drive light being lit up constantly, making my machine unusable. I replaced the hard drive, cloning over the contents, and it all went away. So, yes, it does cause that.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Have you tried running a chkdsk? This should work the same in most versions of windows.

https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/fix-hard-drives-chkdsk-windows-10/

I recommend a chkdsk c: /f frirst. If that doesn't fix anything, you can try chkdsk c: /f /r. Warning: the /r option can take a long time depending on the size of the drive.

 

[dgingeri]

I found something else that can cause SATA resets that might cause such activity: The PCIe power management settings.
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/kevinholman/2013/06/21/event-id-129-storachi-reset-to-device-deviceraidport0-was-issued/

Apparently, with some chipsets, the power management will turn down the PCIe data rate, going from 3.0 down to 1.1, in order to conserve power, which causes the controller to reset and cause drive activity to cap out while doing nothing. A simple setting change fixes this. Of course, it is still recommended to check the event log for this to confirm this is happening before changing that setting. The setting to change is in the link above.

 

[Matthew_198]

Yeah i had this issue. Take a look at http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-tips-fix-100-disk-usage-improve-windows-performance/ .

 

[Tomdude006]

Thanks for all the replies, i will definitely try all of these methods when i get back to my PC.