Hard Drive Always Maxed

Greetings all. I've got an issue with my HDD working at 100% nearly all the time. I've gone thru the Malware Help (thread with the same name as this one) and TimW helped me along with that. He said if I was still having issues I should come here. I thought it was starting to behave but now I'm back to being maxed. When I bring up TaskManager it usually shows System as hogging the HDD most of the time. Previous to the Malware removal process it didn't show which process was hogging the HDD.

My computer is a Lenovo Ideapad Y700 if you need the specs.
per Belarc:
LENOVO 80NW Lenovo ideapad Y700 Touch-15ISK

2.60 gigahertz Intel Core i7-6700HQ
256 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache
6144 kilobyte tertiary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (4 total)
Hyper-threaded (8 total)

974.29 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
676.02 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space <-- this number does change a lot. I'm a photographer and moving files onto and off of the drive is a constant. Currently this is what I have when I have offloaded most of my work to external sources.

Board: LENOVO Allsparks 5A2 SDK0J40709 WIN
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz

8036 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory
Slot 'ChannelA-DIMM0' has 4096 MB (serial number 37171643)
Slot 'ChannelA-DIMM1' is Empty
Slot 'ChannelB-DIMM0' has 4096 MB (serial number 37171621)
Slot 'ChannelB-DIMM1' is Empty

Things I've tried:
Disabling Windows Search
Disabling Windows Indexer
uninstall TeamViewer
uninstall RamDisk
uninstall software I wasn't using
disable as much of Cortana as I could

If any of you can help me diagnose this I'd greatly appreciate it.
Thanks

 

Work through this tutorial.
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-...ource-processes-using-task-manager-windows-10

 

Can you supply new screenshots, please?

The way I read it is that the HDD is 100% *active* only because during that specific 1 minute interval, there was always *something* reading or writing to the disk - it's never *idle*. A 1TB 3.5" HDD is likely to have read/write stats in the 80-130 MB/s range, with a similar capacity 2.5" ~60-100, whereas the sum total for both at the highest counts appears to be ~25 MB/s - leaving considerable headroom for faster read/writes.

The other screenshot shows the processes with the highest counts: security software, *System* and a web browser. Moderate to high drive activity is expected when security software is actively scanning, System will be updating logs/NTFS file 'touched' dates and all manner of 'under the hood' stuff, one web page might contact 20+ different servers for cookies and files which are then written to the disk.

I think that TaskMan's Disk stats in W10 are just confusing, I see nothing on the screenshots to suggest that the HDD is actually running at anywhere near full tilt. That it can now only show the last 1 minute's worth of data makes it worse (XP-W7 can extend the time shown to the full screen width, with larger/multiple screens, that might be 30+ minutes worth of data!).

So, let's have some fresh screenshots to mull over

 

At this point I'm giving serious consideration to buying a Mac.

 

Sheesh, those images are too compressed to read easily, there's an alt. method available on uploading here where you can specify images are shown at a higher resolution.

First off, you need to control what runs, anything that isn't required to be constantly running should be setup so that it only runs when needed (ex.: XBox, DropBox, updaters generally, most of the OEM Lenovo stuff), we can't do much about background Windows programs like System, which responds to a huge range of triggers - but if you reduce the number of software constantly running, it will have a knock on effect of reducing the amount of disk access System and other background tasks need to do.

With security software, you really don't need all the bells and whistles if you have a reasonably secure (layered security) PC, eg. boot time scans are unnecessary unless your real-time protection has failed you or you suspect that *something's* crept in - then it should only require re-enabling for 2-3 boots while you run double/triple checks to ensure the system is clean. You can then disable the scan at Boot again. Similar for the real time settings - do you really need to check the same data 3 times (read/write/access) each time it's used?

You have a very good mobile CPU but it's already hamstrung by a slow 2.5" HDD (no SSD fitted to yours?), a Workstation/Desktop game/Server it isn't. It could do a reasonable job of all there tasks - but you'd need to learn which role requires (or more importantly doesn't require) which software running to enable the most efficient use of the machine - if you want to do all three things at the same time, it's going to be an uphill struggle, there's a lot to learn, investigate and test.

XP had a Hardware Profile system inbuilt which was designed for fine tuning various different scenarios, I used it a lot and it was very good. Then MS dropped it! You could think about how you could separate/combine your various tasks and plan your working time around say, three 'groups' of tasks; offline (Photoshop etc., disconnect from the 'net, no security required, no uploads/downloads/updaters getting in the way), online for uploading finished jobs/backups/browsing/email etc.; free time, multimedia/gaming, etc.).

Check why the Dolby software is hitting the disk hard, was it momentary or sustained? Do you really need it running full time? Similar for every 3rd party software, work out what you really need and what you only need occasionally.

[Apologies if this doesn't come over as expected/intended, I've not been 100% over the last day or so.]

 

Well I think you get the idea with the screenshots, unless you really want me to post higher quality shots.

Primary use for my computer is image editing. I do it a lot. Primary programs for that purpose are DxO Optics Pro, Corel Paintshop Pro, Photomatix. I occasionally use LightRoom.
Secondary use is Waze map editing. Chrome and a host of scripts in Chrome are it.
I bought what was advertised as a gaming PC for the horsepower of doing the photo editing. When the HDD isn't busy with something else it definitely fits my needs. I've downloaded a game or two but don't really play much. During the busy season with my work I don't have much free time. Aside from map editing I don't do much web surfing. I do occasionally check websites but usually just ones that are submitted for places. My home PC is the one I do most web surfing on. Half the time this computer isn't even online when I'm editing photos.

The only security software I have is what comes with Win10 and the ones that I used for the Read And Run Me First, maybe a few things I've got from Major Geeks. I should uninstall the ones I don't need.

I'll try stopping the Dolby service and setting it to Manual start. I don't even do a lot of video editing and half of what I do is from a drone, no audio. I don't think Dolby is pinging all the time though, may have just caught it when it was doing something.

Since I've last posted here I've got a big update to the OS (spring update?). Things do seem to be behaving a lot more already. Maybe Microsoft fixed something with it, or maybe System was getting things on my system prepared for the update. Previous to this though it was acting up for months. If it continues to behave I'll probably spring for the SSD.

At any rate I really appreciate your thoughts. The long periods of time between my posts is due to just being too busy to think, not that I dislike what you're saying.

 

Yes, it's very likely that MS' latest attempt at improving W10 has made changes that are reducing the impact for you.

I'm currently customising 1803 after installing it on my #2 PC earlier today, nothing 'bad' noted as yet, it's not cooked my GPU like a botched install of the Anniversary Update did (just seeing/hearing a big CPU hit triggered by the svchost for the WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service, that'll be on my list to investigate), not seen any notable Disk I/O hit on the System SSD after ~9 hours uptime. I'll disable some more useless 'features' before rebooting to test further.

 

It's me again. This issue just isn't going away. Disk usage is still grinding at 100% a lot of the time.
I noticed an alert icon on Windows Defender. I clicked on it and there was a troubleshooter for performance. It didn't do anything, but there's also a Fresh Start option. Has anyone tried this? Yesterday I seriously had my computer in my hands ready to slam it onto the desk and go buy another one. I can't take much more of this stalled computer crap.

 

Do you really want to re-install your apps, and office ?
It is basically a clean install, losing apps, but keeping files- A refresh can be good.
I would ensure you have any certificate needed, and disks to reinstall your apps, and Microsoft Office if you have it.and have backup of any important stuff, before deciding.

 

Everything I own I've either paid for or it's a free app so I'm good there. But I guess I didn't read the screenshot right. I thought it said it would keep the apps. I guess I am getting to the point where I might just do it anyways though. "System" keeps popping up at 80-90% disk usage. I was hoping there'd be some way to find out what it was doing and fix/stop it/give it what it needs. I think I'll try uninstalling more stuff and see if there's any improvement.

 

Did you go to Eldon's suggestion, in post#2 ? - You should answer any help given, so as to let us know.

 

Yes I did. It tells you how to open task manager, how to sort the items in task manager, how to kill processes in task manager. However it does not tell you any more useful info other than that. "System" is not a process you can kill with Task Manager. Searching for "System" yields pretty generic results.

 

Right-clicking on the System process will give you an option to see the Service(s) involved. Using Resource Manager you might be able to drill down to find the internal process (Cortana/defrag/Search/Defender/... ) causing the issue.

After twice failing to get a reasonable upgrade to 1803 last week, I suggest rolling back from it to your previous version (if the rollback is successful!) and staying with your 'older' version for another few months. What I've seen suggests that anyone using non 'standard' software/settings might be in for a very rough ride.

I saw some basic differences both times (eg. ICE probably an older version, disabled in one but not the other) but the main problem was with the Internet connection, 1803 trying to 'fix' something that wasn't broken (or it was trying to undo my straightforward/direct settings) and use some convoluted guesswork/telemetry-loaded version of the stack instead, the result being an overloaded CPU (for a minute or more) each time I tried to open anything connected and a huge lag (40-50 seconds, sometimes more) before any connection was made. I'm pretty sure I know the Service 'at fault' but it looks like MS has removed the ability for any user interaction with it recently, so I was blocked from 'fixing' something that Windows couldn't.

I might try a clean install of 1803 in the coming weeks...

 

Right clicking on System in Task Manager's Processes tab lets me click on Details, which takes me to Details tab. Right clicking on System there doesn't give me the option to see what services are being used by System. If I click on other items in Details tab I can see the services.

 

But you can't get to the specific Services used by the System process? (I'm not reinstalling W10 again to test ) I've never been a fan of W10's half-cocked TaskMan, it's all fluff cf. W7's.

Can you use the System process PID from TaskMan to track what it's doing with Resource Monitor?