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I have been experiencing an abnormally high disk usage on Windows 8.1 for a couple of months now that has greatly hindered the speed of my laptop, particularly when a process is retrieving memory from the page-file.
The disk usage often reaches 100% usage and slows the system down to a halt despite only reading and writing at a very slow rate, sometimes never even reaching beyond kilobytes a second.
Solutions I've attempted:
- Running
chkdsk /r - Disabling prefetch and superfetch (despite not owning an SSD) via their registry keys
- Manually setting the pagefile size
- Disabling the pagefile (Resulting in BSODs every week or so)
- Messing with any hard-drive related BIOS settings (there were none)
- Defragmenting the hard-drive with a rainbow of third-party and official defragmentation software
- Disabled notifications
- Any combination of the above
- Pretty much any other solution I've found searching Google and this website
I've often noticed when it hits 100% disk usage multiple processes are utilizing 0.1% of the disk usage.
Process Monitor shows nothing of value.
AlphaDelta
Posted 2017-03-02T00:43:31.630
Reputation: 341
if you see a lot of pagefile activity, it means you need more RAM. to fix high disk IO buy a SSD – magicandre1981 – 2017-03-02T05:37:58.417
@magicandre1981 When this problem occurs it's not always the pagefile, in fact a lot of the time it's completely random, I have 8GB of RAM. I'd prefer to not buy some new expensive hardware for a problem that I haven't experienced until Windows 8.1. – AlphaDelta – 2017-03-02T06:27:16.603
Possible hard disk failure. Check your hard drives for SMART errors How can I read my hard drive's SMART status in Windows 7?, and What is the easiest method of checking SMART status for your hard drive?. Report back with the results.
– DavidPostill – 2017-03-02T15:16:26.110@magicandre1981 I understand how hard-drives work, I have a disassembled hard-drive on my desk right next to me. This issue has not affected me in the long experience I've had as a Windows user and a programmer up until just now. I do not have the option of simply buying a new solid state drive and installing it as the problem is affecting my laptop and its architecture might as well be alien to me. @DavidPostill There is nothing much out of the ordinary in the SMART test, apart from six pending sectors (which
chkdsk /rdidn't help with). Could this be causing the significant speed issues? – AlphaDelta – 2017-03-03T00:36:24.483Process explorer from sysinternals might be handy in working out what is using your hard drive. That said, pending sector counts are typically a sign of impending, major hard drive failure. – Journeyman Geek – 2017-03-03T00:43:47.317
@JourneymanGeek I set up Process Explorer a while ago to show disk usage and IO but it never really showed anything valuable, it's often around 10-20 processes all attempting to read and write on the disk at the same time at ~0.1Mbps resulting in ~800Kbps read and write speeds and a >1000ms disk response time. Sometimes a process may be able to read at ~1Mbps but regardless it's always 100% disk utilization. – AlphaDelta – 2017-03-03T00:52:00.153
1Yeaaah, that's a sign your drive might be on its way out. – Journeyman Geek – 2017-03-03T00:52:40.203
@JourneymanGeek Thank you, I'll be sure to back it up and read up on laptop hard-drive replacement (or maybe an RMA if I'm still in-warranty). – AlphaDelta – 2017-03-03T00:54:12.103