HDD always at 97%

Cantaloupeman · February 21, 2018

Whenever i play games i get lots of stutter. I recently thought to check my task manager and my HDD is on full usage almost all the time. It is 1tb and apparently it is at 100% just from browsing the web. Why is this? I have had problems with it not booting my computer before but i have never noticed this. Could this be the cause of my stutter? Do i need to replace it? I think it is quite old now.

MrDrWho13 · February 21, 2018

It's likely the cause. You can buy an SSD (500GB?) to install Windows on and keep your HDD for file storage.

kirashi · February 21, 2018

23 minutes ago, Cantaloupeman said:

Whenever i play games i get lots of stutter. I recently thought to check my task manager and my HDD is on full usage almost all the time. It is 1tb and apparently it is at 100% just from browsing the web. Why is this? I have had problems with it not booting my computer before but i have never noticed this. Could this be the cause of my stutter? Do i need to replace it? I think it is quite old now.

19 minutes ago, MrDrWho13 said:

It's likely the cause. You can buy an SSD (500GB?) to install Windows on and keep your HDD for file storage.

Buy an SSD for your boot drive. I have yet to find any system that doesn't exhibit the 95%-100% Disk Use "bug" on OS versions newer than MacOS 10.9.x or Windows 8.1/10 since these modern operating systems perform a literal craptonne of micro disk operations in the background for optimization and performance reasons. Don't take this the wrong way though - this is what keeps your system up-to-date in terms of running maintenance, defragging (not very common anymore), and general stability. It's just that traditional mechanical drives cannot handle this and load large files such as game textures or video files for editing without being thrashed. Get an SSD for your Windows boot drive and put everything else on the 1TB HDD.

KarathKasun · February 21, 2018

You have things in the background that are updating or downloading things.

The usage data shown in task manager is like a measurement of how well the HDD is keeping up with requests. If its always high it means that your data is fragmented and the drive has to do more physical work to get even the smallest things, or the drive is constantly reallocating sectors because the drive is having trouble reading the disk.

A solution for the first problem is to copy all data off the disk and reformat followed by a re-install and restoring your data, or defrag the drive from another Windows install (Windows cant defrag files that are in use, so a boot drive cant fully defrag itself). In addition, NTFS (Windows filesystem) deteriorates over time due to the journaling and other features, and it eventually gets to the point where fragmentation cant be readily fixed. This slow decline in speed is accelerated if you keep the disk nearly full.

If its the second problem (a SMART diagnostic tool can usually show this, not 100% reliable readings though) the drive is on its way out and needs to be replaced.

I just setup an E3 1220 using a 1TB HDD, after the install and updates it idles at 0-5% disk usage. If you use tons of apps that remain open and have automatic updates, your mileage may vary.