disk usage 100 Windows 10 is going to drive me nuts

[tmunited99]

I am still an ancient 5400RPM Hard Drive user. This is an ENORMOUS issue in Windows 10, where everything for NO apparent reason uses 100% of my HDD and takes actual tens of seconds to load. I'm talking the start menu, the search bar, the right click context menu, the notifications centre, the clock, the on-screen keyboard, the settings app, the User Account Control pop-up. EVERYTHING that Windows 10 has as its own unique feature takes AGES to load. This is happening since I started using this OS in 2015, and its finally driving me nuts, as I play GTA V, an HDD heavy game as it loads so many assets and is also broken, anyway, as I play, Windows decides it's time for the System task to use 50 MB/s of my HDD, together with the shadow copy service, Your Phone app, Office, and anything else it can think of. I am sick of this OS so bad I seriously wanna go back to Windows 7. At least it worked. Anyway, anyone know what to do? I am so done with this OS.

 

I should add, my father, who has a far slower machine overall, runs this OS just fine. This is ridicilous. All of this happens even after a reinstall. And yes, my HDD is 6 years old.

 

[DoctorNick]

Get SSD, why would you punish yourself with 5400 RPM of pure evil?

[tmunited99]

Just now, DoctorNick said:

Get SSD, why would you punish yourself with 5400 RPM of pure evil?

I can't afford one.

[DoctorNick]

Just now, tmunited99 said:

I can't afford one.

2.5" sata is pretty cheap. Get 120/250gb for windows. You can use 5400RPM as secondary 

[tmunited99]

Just now, DoctorNick said:

2.5" sata is pretty cheap. You can use 5400RPM as secondary 

No matter how cheap. I'm a 14 year old with no allowance. Getting new hardware is something I can only hope to see in maybe a couple of months.

[DoctorNick]

Just now, tmunited99 said:

No matter how cheap. I'm a 14 year old with no allowance. Getting new hardware is something I can only hope to see in maybe a couple of months.

Alright then get a job. Or ask your neighburs if they need help with something. or something like that.

[tmunited99]

1 minute ago, DoctorNick said:

Alright then get a job. Or ask your neighburs if they need help with something. or something like that.

Yeah I get you. Will look into it. The earliest age I can legally get a part-time is 15, which I will be turning into in 3 months.

[tmunited99]

1 minute ago, DoctorNick said:

Alright then get a job. Or ask your neighburs if they need help with something. or something like that.

Still though, I'm not looking for advice on how to get money to get new hardware. I'm looking if there's a solution to this issue with my current drive.

[Podrake]

Just now, tmunited99 said:

Still though, I'm not looking for advice on how to get money to get new hardware. I'm looking if there's a solution to this issue with my current drive.

no.

[tmunited99]

1 minute ago, Podrake said:

no.

I somewhat doubt that. There must be a way to remove Office, stop updates and telemetry. It's been done, I just don't know how.

[Podrake]

Just now, tmunited99 said:

I somewhat doubt that. There must be a way to remove Office, stop updates and telemetry. It's been done, I just don't know how.

That will make such a minuscule difference that it might as well not affect it 

[GoodBytes]

Windows 10 has been optimized for SSDs. Windows powered system with an HDD, even a new system, should not be considered... like 4GB of RAM models.

One can get by a high performing 7200RPM HDD, but a 5400RPM is really a no go as a main system drive.

 

But here is what you can do to help alleviate things (until you have an SSD):

• Get a different A/V than Windows Defender. Those tend to consider HDDs, and help things.
• If it's been a long time, consider backing up all your personal data (as it will disappear), and re-install Windows 10 (be sure to format the disk/partition under Windows 10 setup). Why? This will not only act as a defrag, but also regroup somewhat files together so the HDD doesn't need to fetch the data all over the place on the disk. You can also do... what I call... hyper-defrag, which very few defrag software support. O&O Defrag is one that does this, but it is a paying app (but you can use the trial version). It has the option to defrag what it calls "Complete/Access", which will not only defrag the HDD, but also sort the data by when they are access to try and regroup them. It takes about 8-10h to do, and you have to be sure that your system doesn't go to sleep while it does this (disable sleep). Data loss can occur (can get stuck). So, backup first. Performance increase would be potentially negligible... so, depends on how desperate you are in trying to get every drop of performance.
• Ensure that in your BIOS, that your SATA controller is set to SATA mode, and not IDE/Legacy, and that AHCI is enabled
• Ensure that your chipset drivers are installed
• Ensure that your SATA Controller (if it is one outside of the chipset) driver is installed as well.

[tmunited99]

3 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Windows 10 has been optimized for SSDs

You can get by a high performing 7200RPM HDD, but a 5400RPM is really a no go.

 

But here is what you can do to help alleviate things (until you have an SSD):

• Get a different A/V then Windows Defender. Those tend to consider HDDs
• If it's been a long time, consider backing up all your personal data (as it will disappear), and re-install Windows 10 (be sure to format the disk/partition under Windows 10 setup). Why? This will not only act as a defrag, but also regroup somewhat files together so the HDD doesn't need to fetch the data all over the place on the disk. You can also.. what I call... hyper-defrag, which very few defrag software support. O&O Defrag is one that does this, but it is a paying app (but you can use the trial version). It has the option to defrag Complete/Access, which will not only defrag the HDD, but also sort the data by when they are access to try and regroup them. It takes about 8-10h to do, and you have to be sure that your system doesn't go to sleep while it does this (disable sleep). Performance increase would be negligible... so, depends on how desperate you are in trying to get every drop of performance.
• Ensure that in your BIOS, that your SATA controller is set to SATA mode, and not IDE/Legacy, and that AHCI is enabled
• Ensure that your chipset drivers are installed
• Ensure that your SATA Controller (if it is one outside of the chipset) driver is installed as well.

Any AV's you could recommend? I've always stuck to Defender and Malwarebytes until it's free trial ran out, then just Defender and Malwarebytes for scans.

[malon]

i remember that in earlier versions of w10 the superfetch(sysmain) service was the culprit for this behavior when i had a pc with just a hdd.

it is safe to disable this service to test if disabling it improves performance.

 

 

[tmunited99]

2 minutes ago, malon said:

i remember that in earlier versions of w10 the superfetch(sysmain) service was the culprit for this behavior when i had a pc with just a hdd.

it is safe to disable this service to test if disabling it improves performance.

 

 

Thanks. Done.