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I have been experiencing performance drains problems with my HDD that is running windows. When my disk usage is high for that particular drive, most apps stop responding and my cursor will freeze. There have been times when there would be a 7-minute delay from when I move my mouse and when it moves on screen. I have a good drive (WD Blue 1tb 7200RPM) and had no problems until just last week. I've heard that when an HDD has a lot of data on it, it tends to slow down. I only have 180gbs out of 930 remaining but I never experienced problems like this and so frequently.
I tried looking to see if there are any apps that are using up most of my disk usage but the TaskManager does not show the information for my disk usage under the processes tab. I say that because I can only see the usage under the performance tab and while I'm on the processes tab, I see a different number (i.g 10% usage under processes tab and 100% usage under performance tab). Windows sees the HDD as the third disk (disk 2) instead of disk 0, although I'm not sure if that would make a difference in the data shown in the processes tab.
I'm also worried that my HDD might be failing although by running tests and looking at Disk Manager, everything seems healthy. My HDD is only 10 months old anyway. Just in case I purchased a Segate Barracuda as a replacement or another hard drive to store more of my games on to clean up my C drive.
How can I determine what my problem is and how can I fix it before things get worse? And how can I see the disk usage for my C drive in task manager, process tab?
EDIT: I just realized that in the Processes tab, disk utilization looks at all drives. Which makes it a bit messy (for me at least) to see which specific drives are using up how much of one drive since I actively use three separate drives all day.
The behavior you describe could be caused by a HDD that was generating lots of I/O errors – Ramhound – 2017-10-27T01:44:00.287
@Ramhound, what do you mean by "lots of I/O errors"? – Lucas – 2017-10-27T01:46:41.670
I mean that Windows encounters an error when it reads or writes data to your HDD then attempts to do it again and each time it does this it encounters an error making it attempt it again until the data successfully written or read – Ramhound – 2017-10-27T01:49:27.923
@Ramhound, okay that makes sense, but how do I figure out if that is happening and how can I fix it? – Lucas – 2017-10-27T02:02:41.500
Determine if the HDD is failing by using its built in diagnostic S.M.A.R.T data – Ramhound – 2017-10-27T02:03:58.310
Is the data a hybrid drive with integrated flash/ssd memory? If so, certain performance settings can cause the PC to hang when the SSD memory flushes to the HDD. – Sir Adelaide – 2017-10-27T02:11:12.503
@SirAdelaide, no my HDD is not a hybrid. – Lucas – 2017-10-27T02:37:06.483
@Ramhound, I did that, even with the manufactures software, I found no errors. – Lucas – 2017-10-27T02:37:57.020
What about your other disks on your system. Any storage device encountering errors would generate a delay like you describe when it’s accessed. – Ramhound – 2017-10-27T03:08:18.447
I tested all of my drives, found nothing wrong. – Lucas – 2017-10-27T03:15:22.620