UKC

I've got a pc that runs very slowly. The hard drive has near constant activity (at 100% in the Windows 10 task manager). I've run a variety of disk checks, run malwarebytes and other virus / spyware scans, and all have come back clean and error free. There's no unusual processor or memory activity. Reformatting the hard drive has no impact. I expect that despite the clean disk checks, the hard drive needs replacing.

Do any the UKC computer experts have any suggestions before I cough up some dosh for a new drive?

Cheers,

Henry

In reply to whenry:
If you can find the manufacturer or the HD, on their respective website they usually have decent dianostic tools for you to d/l for free. As you may know, performance will be hit when you're down to the last 5% or so of space, if you'v e not checked already.

Could start in safe mode, and if performance is ok with that, then it looks more likely to be a software / something unique to your profile issue.

In reply to whenry:

Crystal disk info can give you some information about the drive and an idea about how healthy it is.

In reply to rrrock!:

Thanks, I've tried Western Digital's tools, and they came back error free. The hard drive has about 500gb/50% free, so that's not the issue. Crystal Disk Info sounds like a good shout.

In reply to whenry:

How much RAM do you have, and how much of it is free?
When you hit the upper reaches of your RAM, the OS will start to use "virtual memory" (writing stuff to disk) as a kind of extended RAM. Since disk access is tens of thousands of times slower, this can significantly slow things down.

In reply to SenzuBean:

8gb, and it's only using about 3.8gb max.

In reply to whenry:


Bizarre.

Do [Win] + R, type in 'resmon'. Go to 'Disk' tab, and then expand 'Storage' tab. What is your average disk queue length? Mine is mostly around 0.01.

The 'Processes with Disk Activity' tab may be helpful as it might show what it hogging the disk. Is there anything out of order in that list?

In reply to SenzuBean:

A quick glance at the processes with disk activity didn't reveal anything out of the ordinary, but I'll have an opportunity to spend longer digging into the resource monitor over the next couple of days.

In reply to whenry:

Hard drives report their status, including early signs of failure, to the operating system. The standard is called S.M.A.R.T.. Windows 7/8 doesn't allow you to see the info directly, and I don't think win10 does either, so you'll need some third party software like CrystalDiskInfo. Watch out for unwanted toolbars when installing.

Did the bad behaviour start when you upgrades to win10? Was that recent? It could be that something is wrong there and it's thrashing the HDD.

In reply to SenzuBean:

Queue length is from .01 to 10.86 - depending on whether it's idle or being used. No processes out of the ordinary though.

In reply to Jack B:

Crystal Disk Info says the drive is healthy. The disk was playing up prior to the Windows 10 upgrade... same problem with Win7.

In reply to whenry:

What do you mean being 'used'? Mine doesn't spike much above 1.00 even when watching a movie and using the web at the same time. Not sure what you could be doing apart from rendering or gaming that would use more resources.

Anyway I'm just skeptical it's the disk's fault. Ultimately the disk can't force the software to use it 100% of the time - so even if it was faulty, if you're not doing much - the OS shouldn't be ramming the disk.

In reply to SenzuBean:


Anything apart from sitting staring at the screen - scolling down a web page, opening a new tab, opening Outlook - nothing heavy duty!

In reply to whenry:

Are you running 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 10? If it's only 32-bit then you can't utilise all of the installed RAM. You will only be able to use 4GB and if you have hit this limit (3.8GB) then you will be swapping to disk.

In reply to Kermi:

64-bit Windows... shouldn't be a problem.