Slow Hard Disk Response Time

I have a laptop computer running Windows 10. The performance has become unbearable.

Looking at Task Manager, I can see that the Average Response Time sometimes gets over 450 ms, and the Active Time holds steady at 100%.

The drive has plenty of available space. Nonetheless, I ran disk cleanup and checked that fragmentation is not excessive.

This may have started around the time that my laptop was serviced because the battery had swollen up and made the pad buttons hard to press. I'm just trying to get some idea if the hard drive is dying, or if there could be some kind of configuration issue.

Jonathan Wood

Posted 2019-03-09T17:05:25.343

Reputation: 198

To see if the disk is dying, examine the S.M.A.R.T. data of the disk using a tool such as Speccy and include it in the post for us to analyze.

– harrymc – 2019-03-09T20:54:02.097

test hd on linux... and on live ubuntu, you have access to SMART data... – Antony Gibbs – 2019-03-09T21:11:48.250

Answers

You can use the Resource Monitor to check what process is causing the high disk activity. After opening the Resource Monitor switch to the disk tab.

Patrick Terlisten

Posted 2019-03-09T17:05:25.343

Reputation:

1There are many processes accessing the disk. I really think it's more about the slow response time than it is about the number of requests. – Jonathan Wood – 2019-03-09T17:17:29.340

1That‘s correct, but response time and disk activity correlate. High disk usage > high response time. 100% disk usage clearly shows that one or more processes massivly – None – 2019-03-09T17:22:13.270

That's a valid point. But it works both ways. If the drive is slow, then more processes will be waiting for activity to complete. I will look more closely at the processes using the drive. – Jonathan Wood – 2019-03-09T17:23:38.183

The hard drive should not get damaged resulting in poor performance as they are rigid components, but you still complete a number of tests and observations. Your options:

Focus on what's using (and what isn't using) the drive in your processes. Compare what you know normal process activity is and what it is when response is slow. I know you said above that there are many processes but some create more IO than others. You may have normal IO like open applications, Windows system tasks, Windows updates or upgrades and things like the search engine which is supposed to crawl new data so you can find things quicker. But at some point it should come down - wait 20-30 minutes after booting up. After you get to know what's normal, you will be able to see if there is a process that's not supposed to run, or that routinely stays in the top few processes. If possible, you can also compare to another computer with the same OS.
Focus on hardware. Go into the BIOS in disk settings and see if anything looks out of place there. Find a manufacturer's hard drive tool that checks drive SMART status. Your drive is made by Western Digital. You can open up the case if careful and don't care about voiding warranty that much. See if drive connectors look normal, if any cables have been pinched.
Test maximum drive performance. Regardless of slowness, see if you can find a quiet moment and run drive performance tests. This could be as simple as copying a large file, creating and measuring IO with a free tool or purchasing a professional disk performance testing tool. The range here is large, but it could help you measure the limits of your drive.

From my own experience, a used laptop with a drive of your grade can easily be overpowered and response times you show are not abnormal. I would expect boot up to take 5-10 minutes before everything quiets down, and you should be testing after that.

HackneyB

Posted 2019-03-09T17:05:25.343

Reputation:

Sorry, but this response is flat put wrong. Damaged drivrs absolutely result in slow performance caused by read retrys - this is VERY common. HDDs are spinning disks, with such sensitivity even to changes in air pressure they need to have air holes and its recently been discovered that they are so vibration sensitive they can be turned into microphones. Your answer danves.round without ever mentioning the word swap. – davidgo – 2019-03-10T09:02:41.760

When this happens, go to the tab "Process" and click on the column "Disk" to sort all processes by usage of disk space. This should give you a first hint.

Example:

Kai Noack

Posted 2019-03-09T17:05:25.343

Reputation: 1 559