Windows 8 using 100% of HDD with high average response times and low read/write speed

Anonymous
2013-04-29T02:11:24+00:00

Hi There,

Since I upgraded to Windows 8 (in January), I have intermittently experienced freezes, and general performance dips. Upon investigating I found that when this occurred, my Hard Drive was showing as 100% Active Time, with a low Read and Write Speed (could be as low as 10 KB/s or as high as 40MB/s) and an Average Response time well into the 1000's (ms).

This is an example https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23428568/100%25%20HDD.png.

The same thing happens on all the Hard Drives when they're in use. Since it originally started happening, it has only become worse and more frequent. I had thought it may have been a heat problem, but it never gets above 40-50c on the HDD.

All in all.. i'm very confused and really looking for any help you can provide because it's really affecting my daily usage...

Computer Model - Alienware M15X Laptop

OS - Windows 8 Pro 64Bit

Thanks in advance :)

Oliver

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-04-28T15:08:27+00:00

    People how is Microsoft to blame when all my machines that own and manage have not seen this problem and have all the updates on place? I'm willing to bet all of you are running an Intel with an Intel chip set. This is an Intel driver problem not Microsoft.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-04-12T21:17:38+00:00

    I would make sense that the spring update fixes this for lots of people. The big technical change in the update is that a lot of the system files are compressed. Since they are compressed, there's less I/O involved when reading the files.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-04-12T16:15:54+00:00

    AT LAST THE FIX HAS COME FROM MICROSOFT itself, it seems !!!

    Yesterday, I applied the Windows 8.1 update through Windows Update service and the problem is gone. I have been using the PC for almost the entire day today the high disk usage issue no where to be found.

    When I checked I found the MsMpEng.exe has been updated with the recent release in the C:/Programfiles\Windows Defender folder.  In the last year and half nothing else helped to solve the issue. I recommend that you should also try this.

    It was fairly evident that the high disk usage was related to this (check in Details tab of the Task Manager and check for the process using highest I/O read bytes)

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-04-12T11:26:47+00:00

    I had this problem last year until I decided to get a new hard drive a install from scratch. Everything was OK until I defragmented my OS partition, and h*** broke loose: 100% disk usage which rendered my PC unusable and the previous tricks in the thread worked temporarily.

    Then, I restored a previous disk image I made when my PC was Ok, and voila! 10 weeks and counting with no problems or recurrence...

    JCanal

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  5. Anonymous
    2014-03-21T01:35:56+00:00

    Fantastic!  it also took care of my 100% disk usage - the solution lies somewhere in the clean up, the problem still seems to trace back to a recent windows update.  Took my Samsung 700 series from being a frustrating paper weight to back into prime condition

    • THANK YOU!

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