100% HDD usage, freezes

[CandyCake]

Hi, I have problem with my PC lately. My HDD is in still use, almost always 100%. Before that started, one of my games was loading very fast, but now it loads 30-50 seconds later than before. Except that, I have a few freezes (0,5s-2s) even when browsing internet and watching Youtube. Actually I think my PC is about 50% slower. I don't know what's going on, all of my drivers are up to date, I use MSI Live Update 6 to check this. I tried HDD defrag and it didn't help. I'm gonna leave some screenchots of my HDD tests. http://imgur.com/a/JIRUH
My PC:
MD FX-8350, MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard, MSI R9 390, HyperX 8gb RAM, HDD: WD Green (WD10EZRX-00A8LB0), PSU: XFX 750W Pro, Win 10 64x, Zalman Z1 Neo Case, Slientium PC Grandis Cooler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gravemind]

The drive could just be getting old. Your transfer speeds are pretty bad.

Oh and just a pro-tip... don't run the 'Quick Scan' when doing an Error Scan. It never picks up anything. For an almost-perfect idea of the actual health, disable quick scans and let it got for about 5 hours and it'll show you all the slow and/or bad sectors.

[CandyCake]

Just now, Gravemind said:

The drive could just be getting old. Your transfer speeds are pretty bad.

Oh and just a pro-tip... don't run the 'Quick Scan' when doing an Error Scan. It never picks up anything. For an almost-perfect idea of the actual health, disable quick scans and let it got for about 5 hours and it'll show you all the slow and/or bad sectors.

Ok, I'll do that tomorrow

 

[Gravemind]

Just now, CandyCake said:

Ok, I'll do that tomorrow

 

You'll need to set aside a lot of time for a slow scan, especially for a 1TB drive.

[WkdPaul]

13 minutes ago, CandyCake said:

*snip*

 

BEFORE you might waste hours doing a scan, try the following;

 

From the screenshots I can see your HDD is at 100% usage but the transfer speeds are less than 1MB/s ... so it looks like it's something accessing the HDD and not really writing on it.

 

My guess is it's probably indexing, so try turning it off (sorry it's gonna be in English)

 

right click the Start menu and open the "control panel"

in the "control panel" open "indexing options"

 

in the indexing options unselect everything click "ok" then restart

 

If that doesn't work then it could also be your anti-virus working overtime.

 

Let me know if that helps, there are others things to try before doing scan with HD tune.

 

[CandyCake]

34 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

 

BEFORE you might waste hours doing a scan, try the following;

 

From the screenshots I can see your HDD is at 100% usage but the transfer speeds are less than 1MB/s ... so it looks like it's something accessing the HDD and not really writing on it.

 

My guess is it's probably indexing, so try turning it off (sorry it's gonna be in English)

 

right click the Start menu and open the "control panel"

in the "control panel" open "indexing options"

 

in the indexing options unselect everything click "ok" then restart

 

If that doesn't work then it could also be your anti-virus working overtime.

 

Let me know if that helps, there are others things to try before doing scan with HD tune.

 

I launched that thing and it seems I turned it off before because it says "Indexing is not working". And I have Avast Antivirus.

[CandyCake]

Some additional screens from resource monitor and task manager
http://imgur.com/a/hpP45

[WkdPaul]

12 minutes ago, CandyCake said:

I launched that thing and it seems I turned it off before because it says "Indexing is not working". And I have Avast Antivirus.

 

ok, so it's not that ...

 

go into "settings" (not control panel)

in Settings, go into "System"

Then "Notifications &actions"

Turn off "Show Me Tips About Windows"

 

if it doesn't work there a few other things to check

[CandyCake]

3 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

 

ok, so it's not that ...

 

go into "settings" (not control panel)

in Settings, go into "System"

Then "Notifications &actions"

Turn off "Show Me Tips About Windows"

 

if it doesn't work there a few other things to check

Yeah it's turned off already

[WkdPaul]

2 minutes ago, CandyCake said:

Some additional screens from resource monitor and task manager
http://imgur.com/a/hpP45

ok, seems it's Flash player in Chrome and you seem to have a Half-Life 2 server running ...

 

Open Chrome

type this as a URL;

chrome://plugins

 

Scroll down until you see "Adobe Flash Player" and click "disable"

[CandyCake]

Flash is turned off, HF2 server? WTF

[CandyCake]

OK I don't know why HF2S was turned on, it dissapeared quickly, it looks like this right now

[CandyCake]

It seems that if anything is using more than 1,5MB /s in my Task Manager is filling up my HDD and it starts to freeze PC...

[WkdPaul]

32 minutes ago, CandyCake said:

OK I don't know why HF2S was turned on, it dissapeared quickly, it looks like this right now

Ok, if it's  "svchost (netsvcs)" then it's either Windows Update on the fritz (happens more often than you might think) or it could also be the event viewer log.

 

1st (clear event viewer log)

 

1. Open the "Run" popup (Win+R key)
2. Type "eventvwr" and press enter
3. In the event viewer window, double click on "Windows log"
4. Right click "Applications" and select "clear log"
5. Do the same for "Security", "Setup" and "System"
6. Restart your computer

 

 

2nd (clear Win update cache)

 

1. Open the "Run" popup (Win+R key)
2. Type "services.msc" and press enter
3. Stop Windows Update service (no need to disable it)
4. Then go to the "C:/windows" folder and rename the folder "SoftwareDistribution"
5. Restart the computer

[Captain_WD]

12 hours ago, CandyCake said:

~snip~

Hello

 

One of the tests shows that the performance of the drive isn't good at all with access times jumping rapidly at certain points. The drive itself looks healthy from all the tests that you've shown. 

I'd try a different SATA and power cable and try to plug the drive into a different SATA port and possibly run all those tests on a different system and then compare the results. This should enable you to narrow things down to either the drive or to the computer itself. 

If the OS or any of the applications is constantly using the drive it may be getting bottlenecked. Try running the system in safe mode and see if that changes anything. 

 

Captain_WD. 

[CandyCake]

10 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

Ok, if it's  "svchost (netsvcs)" then it's either Windows Update on the fritz (happens more often than you might think) or it could also be the event viewer log.

 

1st (clear event viewer log)

 

1. Open the "Run" popup (Win+R key)
2. Type "eventvwr" and press enter
3. In the event viewer window, double click on "Windows log"
4. Right click "Applications" and select "clear log"
5. Do the same for "Security", "Setup" and "System"
6. Restart your computer

 

 

2nd (clear Win update cache)

 

1. Open the "Run" popup (Win+R key)
2. Type "services.msc" and press enter
3. Stop Windows Update service (no need to disable it)
4. Then go to the "C:/windows" folder and rename the folder "SoftwareDistribution"
5. Restart the computer

Done, rename or remove SoftwareDistribution folder?

[CandyCake]

25 minutes ago, Captain_WD said:

Hello

 

One of the tests shows that the performance of the drive isn't good at all with access times jumping rapidly at certain points. The drive itself looks healthy from all the tests that you've shown. 

I'd try a different SATA and power cable and try to plug the drive into a different SATA port and possibly run all those tests on a different system and then compare the results. This should enable you to narrow things down to either the drive or to the computer itself. 

If the OS or any of the applications is constantly using the drive it may be getting bottlenecked. Try running the system in safe mode and see if that changes anything. 

 

Captain_WD. 

OK, I will change power cable and replace sata cable from my optical drive in free time

[CandyCake]

So I removed the folder (it's still in recycle bin if it needed to be just renamed) and it seems it's working much better already. My game loads fast as always and I don't see any freezes or audio cuts.

[Captain_WD]

1 hour ago, CandyCake said:

~snip~

Do that and post the test results and see if there are any changes. 

 

The new test looks way better both in terms of steady average transfer speeds and steady and constant access times. 

 

Captain_WD. 

[WkdPaul]

3 hours ago, CandyCake said:

Done, rename or remove SoftwareDistribution folder?

you can do both, it doesn't really matter, I usually rename it first and if it's not that I just rename it back, if it's the folder that was the problem then I just delete it, placing it in the recycling bin does the same thing!

 

If you're getting better access time I would empty the recycling bin, the "SoftwareDistribution" folder is only used by Windows Update to "store" the downloaded updates, deleting it or renaming it only force Windows update to create an empty one.