100% Disk Usage on Secondary Drive

[Resonance]

For the past week or so, my storage drive would randomly jump up to 100% which would stall Windows and it would just freeze up for awhile. 

 

I tried to remedy it by finding out the source of why it was jumping to 100% but to no avail.

 

In Task Manager, the 'System' tab is the culprit for why it's jumping so high. I've been trying ways to fix it but none seem to work.

 

Fixes attempted:

- Disabling items like Super Fetch, Windows Update, etc. in Services.msc.

- ( I cannot remember at this current time the command... but ) Scanning and repairing the disk through CMD before Windows started. (Something along the lines of ______ /r D:)

Edit:

- sfc /scannow

- Running anti-virus and malware detection software.

Edit2:

- It was chkdsk /r D:

 

I've been trying ways to replicate the issue, but most of the time I'm not even accessing my secondary drive, however, I can replicate the issue if I let Steam download something, since Steam is on this drive.

I'm just puzzled as to why it's jumping to 100% when I don't access the drive. There could be something else that I'm not aware of that is running but I do not think so.

 

Anyone know how to fix this issue?

Thanks

[Archangel1994]

I had this too on my SSD. I reinstalled windows and after that I found out it was a borked driver

[Resonance]

I had this too on my SSD. I reinstalled windows and after that I found out it was a borked driver

So it's just Windows related? Was it the SSD that was 100%? My SSD just sits around 0%-5% most of the time, occasionally shooting up to 50% when accessing information. Windows can affect my secondary drive as such?

Anyway, I'll try and do a Windows install and see if it helps a bit. Also, is there anything I should be looking out for... driver related? So that I won't have the issue again.

 

Thanks

[Archangel1994]

So it's just Windows related? Was it the SSD that was 100%? My SSD just sits around 0%-5% most of the time, occasionally shooting up to 50% when accessing information. Windows can affect my secondary drive as such?

Anyway, I'll try and do a Windows install and see if it helps a bit. Also, is there anything I should be looking out for... driver related? So that I won't have the issue again.

 

Thanks

I mean it was my SSD but not my HDD which leads me to believe it only affects the drive that the drivers are on. I found it was the Wireless driver and the BT driver that fucked it up

[Resonance]

I mean it was my SSD but not my HDD which leads me to believe it only affects the drive that the drivers are on. I found it was the Wireless driver and the BT driver that fucked it up

Ah, that would make sense. I wonder what I'm facing then. I wouldn't have any drivers installed for anything hardware related on my secondary drive. Hopefully I won't have to reformat the drive, to see if the drive is the issue.

Would you still say that a Windows reinstall may have an effect on my situation?

[Archangel1994]

Would you still say that a Windows reinstall may have an effect on my situation?

You could try running a thorough scan with your Anti-virus, Running a full Malwarebytes scan, doing sfc /scannow in CMD (admin) and maybe downloading avast to do a boottime scan. If all this fails then the only thing I can think of that might fix it is a clean format

[Resonance]

You could try running a thorough scan with your Anti-virus, Running a full Malwarebytes scan, doing sfc /scannow in CMD (admin) and maybe downloading avast to do a boottime scan. If all this fails then the only thing I can think of that might fix it is a clean format

Yeah, I've already done a scan with Windows Defender, since I don't usually use Anti-virus software, however, that in itself is also creating an issue with disk usage, so I disabled it, because that was just adding more fuel to the fire that is already going on.

I've done sfc /scannow, no avail. However, I have not tried doing anything with how the system boots, good idea. I shall try and see if that fixes anything.

[Resonance]

You could try running a thorough scan with your Anti-virus, Running a full Malwarebytes scan, doing sfc /scannow in CMD (admin) and maybe downloading avast to do a boottime scan. If all this fails then the only thing I can think of that might fix it is a clean format

Yeah, nothing seemed to have helped. I suppose a format might be a good idea on both ends, just to rule out all software bugs.

[Archangel1994]

Yeah, nothing seemed to have helped. I suppose a format might be a good idea on both ends, just to rule out all software bugs.

And to start fresh again, I do it relatively often but only because I can have EVERYTHING back in a matter of hours via nothing but downloading (180mbps DL <3)

 

Mind you before doing this download all drivers first and a ninite.com package you want

[Resonance]

And to start fresh again, I do it relatively often but only because I can have EVERYTHING back in a matter of hours via nothing but downloading (180mbps DL <3)

 

Mind you before doing this download all drivers first and a ninite.com package you want

That is impressive DL speeds. I usually don't mind installing Windows because I don't keep too many things on my SSD anyway, just 1.7TB of game data and saved files over the past 5 years is what makes this process a bit painful.

 

Anyways, thanks for your help.

It's just interesting that it just started happening to me recently, I'm not sure what caused it.

[Resonance]

Well, update... 

It seems like I can replicate the issue, in which case I may have found at what point it gets to 100%.

 

So, I've been playing around to find out what cases it gets to 100%.

Anytime RAM usage exceeds 90%, the Disk 1 (D:) usage skyrockets to 100%. Not sure what the correlation is. I'm assuming it's Google Chrome, since most of the time it happens when I'm running RAM intensive applications while either switching tabs or adding more tabs to Chrome.

 

I tried testing a single download, downloading from Steam, where the Disk usage doesn't really move from 0%, occasionally 1%. Then opening up tabs from Chrome until it gets to around 90%-95% RAM usage, where I see the 100% skyrocket from the Disk usage. I have absolutely no clue where this correlation comes from.

 

Anyone know?

 

Thanks

[Resonance]

Awesome I believe I found the fix.

 

I was browsing some other forums to figure out what was going on. It seems page filing was the main culprit.

Whenever RAM usage was allocated to the maximum it would dump the rest of the task on my secondary drive (not sure why it defaulted to my secondary at least).

Anyway, I turned off page filing for the secondary drive, did a restart, and tried to replicate the problem. This time It reached 100% RAM usage but now my SSD began taking the load. 

When my SSD is at 100%, it doesn't make 'as much' of a hassle as my secondary hard drive, Windows does hang but not for a very long time. 

Since I didn't really want to be limited by that either, just cutting in half my page file usage for my SSD, it only gets to around 60-70% usage which allows me to do everything else that I need to without stutter.

Main Culprit: Not having enough RAM and Windows 8.1 Optimization.

 

Thanks, I'll be doing some more testing to 100% verify my issue is resolved.