Question HDD usage sits at 100% with barely any data transfer taking place

[realabhay]

Solutions tested:
wpr -cancel: 'Error, there are no trace profiles running'
stopping DiagTrack

This can be triggered by launching an application, on start-up and sometimes randomly. It happens every time when I'm downloading or updating a game and during that time my computer is too slow to do anything else. But updating a game, "Valorant" is particularly painful when because of this problem the updater sits at 0.1KB/s speed despite a perfect connection and what should take 10mins to update takes about an hour. Steam and google drive are two other applications that are extremely slow and sluggish and google drive sometimes processes thousands of items which despite not transferring much data makes the laptop slower.

 

Troubleshooting:
During that hour I'm closing different disk using applications from task manager. And pray that the problem goes away. Sometimes it does, other times it goes when it wants.
Almost all of the disk hogging tasks during this time are system processes such as "system" and "antimalware service executable". They never utilize the disk this consistently except for when this problem happens.

One peculiarity is that despite my HDD having data transfer capacity of over 100MB/s during most times in this problem the sum total of data transfer taking place is about 3MB/s. How is that even possible, I wanna check if some software issue is underclocking the RPM of my HDD in the double digits so that this is happening or if its just a misreporting my the task manager. How can I check that? Where can I get more detailed statistics of what my HDD is doing during this time.

Sometimes the PC becomes unbearably slow, other times it just hangs until a hard reset or it completely stops a game from launching.

Problem stays even on windows 11, my laptop is expensive should I consider trying another HDD since my laptop doesn't have an SSD slot.

A friend of mine who has a laptop with ST1000LM049 HDD also I observed facing similar problem with sluggish laptop performance and 100% disk usage without any data transfer, and he also had the same problems with Valorant.

Specs:
IdeaPad L340
Toshiba MQ04ABF100
i5-8265U @1.60GHz
GeForce MX110

[kevinj93]

When the HDD is moving smaller files, the transfer speed is much slower than when transferring bigger files, because HDDs have a very low IOPS (Input output Operations Per Second) count. The reason why you're getting a 100% disk usage could be that the IOPS count is maxed out (Random reads/writes are very slow). Or it could be a failing HDD, although it is unlikely in your case.

 

Antimalware/Antivirus makes it even worse as it has to scan those smaller files. This is where SSDs shine compared to HDDs as they have blazing fast random reads/writes.

Edited February 6, 2022 by kevinj93
info added

[realabhay]

26 minutes ago, kevinj93 said:

When the HDD is moving smaller files, the transfer speed is much slower than when transferring bigger files, because HDDs have a very low IOPS (Input output Operations Per Second) count. The reason why you're getting a 100% disk usage could be that the IOPS count is maxed out (Random reads/writes are very slow). Or it could be a failing HDD, although it is unlikely in your case.

 

Antimalware/Antivirus makes it even worse as it has to scan those smaller files. This is where SSDs shine compared to HDDs as they have blazing fast random reads/writes.

hmm, it still doesn't seem right to be seeing a modern computer having trouble running steam and google drive, especially with these background processes blocking out all the IOPS. I also did crystaldiskmark, I had task manager open during it. What's happening with the last 2 scores

[kevinj93]

12 minutes ago, realabhay said:

hmm, it still doesn't seem right to be seeing a modern computer having trouble running steam and google drive, especially with these background processes blocking out all the IOPS. I also did crystaldiskmark, I had task manager open during it. What's happening with the last 2 scores

Those are the random reads/writes I'm talking about. It's totally normal for an HDD. To speed things up, you could turn off the anti-virus, however, I wouldn't advise it.

 

Modern machines usually have the operating system and applications installed on SSD, while games and other stuff are installed on an HDD. Even a cheaper 120GB SSD could make a day and night difference in system responsiveness.

Even when you have a high-end machine, the HDD will always hold it back (due to the slow random reads/writes) when the operating system and applications are installed on it.

 

Windows 10/11 especially have lots of background reads/writes, therefore slowing the system down when it's installed on a HDD.

[stage]

It could be just a sign of a dying drive. 100% usage is common before it rips.