Windows 10 hammering disk usage

[OmarM89]

hello

 

i installed windows 10 update, i have a problem with ssd usage spikes up to 100% for a period of time, sometimes a few moments, sometimes seems like forever and meanwhile pc is freezing

 

i have dell n5110 with 8GB ram , 128 GB of corsair force ls ssd, 

 

i have disabled MSI, BITS, windows tips, notifications and superfetch and nothing seems helping

 

corsair ssd toolbox shows no problem with my ssd, even i updated the firmware with no real improvement

[Tusk2435]

4 minutes ago, OmarM89 said:

hello

 

i installed windows 10 update, i have a problem with ssd usage spikes up to 100% for a period of time, sometimes a few moments, sometimes seems like forever and meanwhile pc is freezing

 

i have dell n5110 with 8GB ram , 128 GB of corsair force ls ssd, 

 

i have disabled MSI, BITS, windows tips, notifications and superfetch and nothing seems helping

 

corsair ssd toolbox shows no problem with my ssd, even i updated the firmware with no real improvement

 

Try instead of looking at the graph, to see in the Processes tab (ordered by disk usage) what is actually using a lot of HDD. Being that you have 3 disks, the biggest percentage any process can do on the same disk is 33.3%, so try looking for that

[OmarM89]

11 minutes ago, LionSpeck said:

Try instead of looking at the graph, to see in the Processes tab (ordered by disk usage) what is actually using a lot of HDD. Being that you have 3 disks, the biggest percentage any process can do on the same disk is 33.3%, so try looking for that

 

nothing is using this much, only disk is hanging

 

 

[Enderman]

Is this an upgraded version of windows from 7 or 8?

[OmarM89]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

Is this an upgraded version of windows from 7 or 8?

i initially upgraded via windows update tool. but i have since the reset my pc to clean state, just like brand new windows installation and nothing helped,

[Aytex]

This happens a lot, you can go to services.msc and disable superfetch and BITS

 

Or Uninstall skype

 

If you have any antivirus uninstall/disable them

Disable windows defender as well

[Tusk2435]

11 minutes ago, OmarM89 said:

nothing is using this much, only disk is hanging

As you should see, the overall disk percentage is 33%, so some applications are using 100% of the primary disk (or any combination of 33% spread over all of the disks which is really unlikely). The problem is: what's using the disk so much is the Local System service (or group of services) so there isn't a way you can know why Windows is using disk. You could try right-clicking on the process (or in this case group of services) that are using a lot of disk and select "Create dump file". Then, try exploring the DMP file with one of these methods: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-analyze-memory-dump-dmp-file/
It should let you see what's going on behind the scenes of those services and maybe you'll see which paths are being used... Also, you could right-click and select "Analyze wait chain" and see if there's anything there.

[Enderman]

2 minutes ago, OmarM89 said:

i initially upgraded via windows update tool. but i have since the reset my pc to clean state, just like brand new windows installation and nothing helped,

You could try to check for windows updates and install anything that is there, but I don't think that will fix it.

I would do a full clean install, not a reset, and that would fix it for sure.

Btw disabling superfetch is not good. You should not change those parts of windows.

[Tusk2435]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

Btw disabling superfetch is not good. You should not change those parts of windows.

Are you serious? Superfetch is highly recommended to be disabled when using an SSD: what it does is analyze and store what the user, System and applications do at startup and use that informations to startup faster (which is pretty much useless when using SSDs). And you consider disabling this "not good"?

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, LionSpeck said:

Are you serious? Superfetch is highly recommended to be disabled when using an SSD: what it does is analyze and store what the user, System and applications do at startup and use that informations to startup faster (which is pretty much useless when using SSDs). And you consider disabling this "not good"?

Superfetch is a memory management tool for how windows handles data cached to ram.

 

Ram is about 10-20 times faster than an SSD, so yes disabling this is not good at all.

 

If superfetch is causing any hangs then it is not an issue with superfetch but with your entire windows installation or drive it is on.

Clearly that was not the issue here, so set it back to default.

[Tusk2435]

16 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Superfetch is a memory management tool for how windows handles data cached to ram.

 

Ram is about 10-20 times faster than an SSD, so yes disabling this is not good at all.

 

If superfetch is causing any hangs then it is not an issue with superfetch but with your entire windows installation or drive it is on.

Clearly that was not the issue here, so set it back to default.

 

Quote

SuperFetch

SuperFetch is a technology that pre-loads commonly used applications into memory to reduce their load times. It is based on the "prefetcher" function in Windows XP.^[13] SuperFetch attempts to load commonly used libraries and application components into memory before they are required. It does so by continually analyzing application behavior and usage patterns, e.g. what applications are typically used in the morning after logon.^[14] The cache memory is marked with low priority, meaning that if another process needs the memory, it will be given up.

By default, the necessary files are loaded into main memory, but using a feature called ReadyBoost, Windows Vista and Windows 7 can use alternative storage such as USB flash drives, thereby freeing up main memory. Although hard disks usually have higher sequential data transfer rates, flash drives can be faster for small files or non-sequential I/O because of their short random seek times.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_I/O_technologies#SuperFetch

 

Quote

Very succinctly put, SuperFetch is a technology which allows Windows to manage the amount of random access memory in the machine it runs on more efficiently. SuperFetch is part of Windows' memory manager; a less capable version, called PreFetcher, is included in Windows XP. SuperFetch tries to make sure often-accessed data can be read from the fast RAM instead of the slow hard drive.

 

SuperFetch' goals

 

SuperFetch has two goals: it decreases boot time, and makes sure applications that you use the most load more efficiently. SuperFetch also takes timing into account, in that it will adapt itself to your usage patterns.

Source: http://www.osnews.com/story/21471/SuperFetch_How_it_Works_Myths


I can't see where this is vital or potentially destabilizing for the system. Disabling it is not bad, there's no proof of it. Also, SSDs manufacturers suggest turnin it off to avoid useless SSD usage, which could potentially be the issue here. So no back to default for now.

EDIT: here's one of the ways manufacturers suggest turning off Superfetch
 

[Enderman]

9 minutes ago, LionSpeck said:

SuperFetch attempts to load commonly used libraries and application components into memory before they are required. The cache memory is marked with low priority, meaning that if another process needs the memory, it will be given up.

This is exactly what I said in my post.

It caches stuff to ram.

Why are you trying to argue that?

[Tusk2435]

Just now, Enderman said:

This is exactly what I said in my post.

It caches stuff to ram.

Why are you trying to argue that?

I can't see where's written that I'm arguing that. I just believe (with proof) that it's not dangerous to turn it off, and that it could easily be left turned off without any problem (or maybe with advantages, too).

[Enderman]

2 minutes ago, LionSpeck said:

I can't see where's written that I'm arguing that. I just believe (with proof) that it's not dangerous to turn it off, and that it could easily be left turned off without any problem (or maybe with advantages, too).

Slower boot times and application loading?

If you consider that an advantage, sure.

[Tusk2435]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

Slower boot times and application loading?

If you consider that an advantage, sure.

Apparently, you're the only one experiencing this on SSDs. You sure you didn't connect the SSD to a USB 2 port?

[Tusk2435]

[OmarM89]

i have done both 

1 hour ago, LionSpeck said:

Apparently, you're the only one experiencing this on SSDs. You sure you didn't connect the SSD to a USB 2 port?

 

1 hour ago, LionSpeck said:

 

1 hour ago, Enderman said:

Slower boot times and application loading?

If you consider that an advantage, sure.

 

 

apparently disabling/enabling superfetch did not help, i have used resource manager but it did not help since when this problem happens it does freeze without showing anything useful

[OmarM89]

@LionSpeck @Enderman

i think i found the problem, i disabled the write cache and it seems have worked, i'm not 100% sure but until now but i will monitor disk usage and feedback about it, however; i feel the ssd got slower but since its mostly used as a boot drive and nothing much is being written to it i dont really care as it is working normally

[OmarM89]

@Slick

i hope that you make a video about most common windows 10 bugs and how to work around them. the linustechtips way