High disk usage and reverberation?

[SageOfSpice]

So, my girlfriend's computer has had this issue pretty much since she got it where the disk will almost constantly max out. Originally, the computer was running Windows 8.1, and it's now running Windows 10 Anniversary. I've done disk benchmarks, and the desktop isn't slow or exhibiting any of the typical symptoms of a failing drive. The reason for the complaint is that the drive makes a rather obnoxious sound while it does this. I've run a few monitoring programs, as well as examined it in performance monitor, I've done DPC latency checks for driver or program issues, I've done benchmarks on it... I cannot figure out what the problem is. In contrast, my drive is almost never accessed on the same operating system with the same configuration. As far as I can tell, there's no aspect of the operating system or it's components that's causing this.

 

I guess the question sort of is: Have you ever encountered this issue before, or do you have any ideas of what I can check?

 

Everything that I can see looks fairly normal. I used Crystal Disk Mark to bench the drive, though in all honesty, I'm not sure how accurate it is. I've dealt with a number of failing drives already that mysteriously perform as they should in a benchmark, yet have issues in a realistic environment. As per what the drive is doing as this is happening: It's mostly just normal background processes. No one process is really responsible for the usage, it's just a bunch of small tasks in the background. Stuff like Google Update, Itunes, ect. I've also taken a look at the network activity, and have even disconnected the computer from the network with no change.

 

At this point, I'm assuming it's some physical defect with the drive, or perhaps an issue with the bios/security. Security wise, I've tried disabling 3rd party anti-virus software, as well as Windows Defender. Windows Defender did have a small effect, but nothing really on the 3rd party, and certainly neither pushing the drive near it's advertised speeds in terms of activity. More precisely, after disabling Windows Defender the low end of the access percentile decreased to 0% from 30%, however, the spike remained and the issue persisted.

 

Any help or ideas would be appreciated. I'm probably going to just pick up an SSD for her eventually, but I sort of want to rule out any potential software issues first.