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I think this is the best place to put this question, but I'm not sure. Basically, my computer will run very slow every once in a while but then everything goes back to normal (for example, I will type something into google and it will show only one character every 2 seconds or so and then finally catch up all at once and goes back to normal).
I notice that this happens when I am doing hard drive intensive things, but I don't know why that would happen so I am concerned. I point out that my computer is very powerful to show that it is not a CPU/RAM issue (intel core i7 quad core, 20 GB RAM, 2x1TB 5400 rpm HDDs).
One reason I am thinking it might not just be hard drive is that right now I am untarring a large file (~130 GB) on a drive that my OS is not installed on and I still see it happening with my OS.
I have done scans on my hard drive and it came back clean. I am running Windows 8.0 if it matters.
Any ideas how I can pinpoint this problem? It is very annoying when I am trying to program and seems like it could potentially be problematic.
resmon.exe (windows resource monitor) can tell you the disk usage un %. if == 100%, then it may be your bottleneck. As adviced above, use an SSD for caching/installing system. or 7200rpm disks. (Also WHY 20Go memory ?) – mveroone – 2014-02-26T10:21:47.097
I run a virtual machine which needs a lot of RAM as well. Honestly 20 isn't even enough most of the time! – drjrm3 – 2014-02-26T15:24:34.263
From my experience, virtual machines tend to do eccessive i/o, especially if you don't disable swap mechanisms in guest OS. with 5400rpm disks, that becomes critical. – mveroone – 2014-02-26T15:29:53.913
Thanks. I have a resource monitor and it definitely shows massive usage on the HDD. what confuses me is that even if my non-OS HD is being used, my OS will slow. Why would that be? – drjrm3 – 2014-02-26T15:50:26.663