Windows 10: Non-Boot disk at 100% active time

One of my disks, in this case the "Z:" drive is at 100% usage at almost all of the time. Sometimes it randomly drops off to zero again, but will go straight back to 100% if I do anything that uses the disk. For instance opening a photo file might cause it to run to 100% for about 10 minutes. During that time the disk doesn't respond very well and the "average response time" drops to >1000ms and the transfer rate is in the kbps.


I cannot get it to regularly jump to 100%, so I cannot figure out what exactly the problem is. I recently re-installed windows from scratch and I'm still seeing the problem.


As a last resort I'm going to try running chkdsk, but since it's an 8tb HDD, it's going to take many many hours to complete.


Let me know if there are any other ideas. I have tried just about everything from this list... https://www.makeuseof.com/tips-fix-100-disk-usage-improve-windows-performance/ But it hasn't helped.


Thank you in advance.

:)

 

Very slow boot time - 100% disk active time

Thanks for helping out.

Disabling fast startup made boot time MUCH WORSE ! (took like 4-5 minutes after logging into windows for disk activity to drop below 100%).

Also, a clean boot didn't help either but I could see that Bitdefender antivirus could not be disabled, so I went all the way and completely uninstalled it. This helped boot time (no 100% disk activity this time at all upon boot which is normal since nothing loads up on boot), but even the slightest task (like opening a single docx) makes disk activity go all the way up to 100% for a few seconds (4-5 sec), during which everything is laggy.

I managed to grab a screenshot of the resource monitor when the HDD was @ 100% (with Bitdefender still installed), and figured out that the disk goes to 100% with a Total (read/write) speed of 3 MB/s ! I don't know if that's normal... Also attached is the bottom part of CrystalDiskMark as requested







Running the /sfc scannow command gave showed no violations





Also, new CrystalDiskMark test, with no antivirus installed :





I am beginning to think that disk read/write/access speed is the reason behind all problems because, even after successfully booting into windows and the disk activity goes to normal levels, it still goes to 100% and the system becomes extremely laggy/slow even for the simplest of tasks...

 

100% disk usage on boot up for at least 5 to 10 minutes

Hi there, I did a clean boot as you suggested and the boot up time became considerably longer and although disk usage was 100%, this was only for a minute or so. The program at the top of the disk utilisation list this time though was service host:superfetch.

However I then didn't disable anything in the services tab but disabled all the programs in the startup tab and restarted. This resulted in a very speedy boot up AND there was no 100% disk utilisation. I've done this several times enabling a couple of programs
on startup and the disk utilisation is no longer 100%.

It appears therefore as though it was some kind of conflict in the startup programs that was causing the 100% disk utilisation.

Thanks very much for your assistance.

 

Very slow boot time - 100% disk active time

Yeah, that will happen. That's why I said to give it a "few" good shutdowns. Usually, when I see all kinds of disk activity at startup that doesn't go away, or takes forever to go away, it can be a cause of Fast Startup being on. Turning it off can let the programs that need to finish things up, actually finish them up. Fast Startup is like a hybrid hibernation. Many times, things like FPRs (Files Pending Rename) and other stuff that needs to be done outside the OS, never have a chance to get done, because Fast Startup never lets the OS go completely.

Any AV is going to put stress/activity on a HDD; removing Bitdefender was a good test, but it appears you have something else going on. The Read Error Rate (1st line of Crystal Disk Info) may just be another symptom of whatever the problem is.

Thanks - the two attributes I was looking for were Current Pending Sector Count and Uncorrectable Sector Count, both of which are fine.

I'm no HDD expert, and perhaps others will have more ideas for you, but I think perhaps you might want to run the Seagate Seatools utility on that drive, and see if it passes. You'll want to run the long test, and it will take quite some time on a 1TB drive.
SeaTools | Seagate Support Deutschland

Just thinking how a mechanical drive works (compared to an SSD), and seeking data, if it's scattered all over, a defrag would help. But this is a new installation. There may be something physically wrong with that drive, (or the connection) and Seagate would have to tell you what tests to run to give them whatever info they need to determine that.

Of course, it's always possible that it was a bad OOBE setup, and a reinstall might help (yes, I've seen it happen), but that would mean setting up all your software all over again.

Perhaps some hardware experts will chime in with some other ideas for you.