Pls Help Diagnose I/o Speed Issue

Dell Precision w/ i7-2760QM @ 2.4GHz
8 GB ram
64 bit Win7 Pro SP1
NVidia Quattro 1000M
300 GB drive

Sometimes performance is normal, other times it is woefully inadequate. See attached pics

http:////jacobschmidtassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/CCSIObenchmark110918.png

https://jacobschmidtassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Belarc111018-001.png

https://jacobschmidtassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Belarc111018-002.png https://jacobschmidtassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Belarc111018-003.png

https://jacobschmidtassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Belarc111018-004.png

How do I determine if my issue is with the drive, or the i/o circuit, or something else?
tia

 

let's try that first image again as it doesn't want to display in the thread:

https://jacobschmidtassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/CCSIObenchmark110918.png

 

Did the problem recently start? Any recent changes to your computer? Have you tried a different anti-malware solution?

Since it is intermittent, I would not suspect hardware.

Note Chrome is notorious for leaving way too many open sessions. Next time it slows down, run Task Manager and see what is hogging your resources.

 

I have had task manager open for the past number of days and have looked at it when this situation occurs, and the system idle process is at 98+% at those times. There was one time when doing the ctrl/alt/del took 5 minutes to bring up the dialog allowing me to start task manager, which is why I have been keeping it open the past few days. It just seems like it nods off at times, but I cannot find a time when there is actually anything using the cpu at those times.

I do use Chrome and like to keep a number of tabs open simultaneously.

Been using Avast for several years - would you suggest a different one?

No changes to the computer. The situation has been getting worse over the past number of months, but is really annoying at this point.

The other day I needed to copy several gigs of photos from the usb drive to a thumb drive. It would start off at a decent transfer rate but after about a minute or two, the transfer would slow to a crawl with occasional little spurts of decent activity - the overall time to do this transfer was literally 10 times what I think it should have been.

I've done all your standard anti-malware cleanup stuff again very recently, and the only thing that gets found are the typical tracking cookies.

 

When it happens, I would exit Chrome and see what happens. I like and use Chrome too, but as I said, it has a reputation for eating up too many resources. Make sure you have the latest version too.

Try uninstalling Avast, reboot, then use Microsoft's own Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) and see what happens. MSE/Windows Defender (WD), along with Malwarebytes is what I use on all my computers. Contrary to what many want everyone else to believe, MSE/WD is quite capable of keeping our systems clean - as long as you keep it and Windows updated and you are not "click-happy" on unsolicited downloads, links, attachments, and popups; the very same precautions you must take with Avast or any other anti-malware solution you use.

And you should always have a secondary scanner, at least for "on demand" scanning to make sure you (the user and always weakest link in security) or your primary scanner did not let something slip by. Again, the same thing we all should do regardless our primary scanner of choice. And Malwarebytes (which I see is what you currently use ) is what I recommend for that too.

Remember, Microsoft does not want the bad publicity of failing to keep our systems secure. So why would they include an anti-malware solution that couldn't protect us? I am not trying to convince you to switch to MSE/WD. I just want to ensure there are no preconceived notions that they are not good enough. They are.

If it makes no difference with MSE instead of Avast, and you prefer Avast, then by all means, you can always install Avast again.

Okay, that's good.

I note on your C drive, you only have 31GB of free disk space available at the time of your Belarc screen shot. That could be part of your problem. Windows loves lots of free disk space to operate in. I recommend you see what you can delete or move to D drive. I recommend you run Windows Disk Cleanup (or CCleaner if already installed). Uninstall any programs you installed but don't use (or reinstall them on to D drive). You can also free up space by moving the default locations for the Windows temp folder, Downloads folder and Documents folder to D drive if necessary.

 

OK here is a quick update: (been too busy with work to focus on this as I should)

I moved a bunch of stuff off the C drive and uninstalled some programs such that I have around 70 GB free. That made an improvement, but it still has times where it just seems to go to sleep for a while in the midst of doing something. For example, a large file transfer will run okay for a while (10-30 seconds, then slow down, pause, speed up a little, pause, etc.)

I uninstalled Avast and have it only running Windows Defender now. That possibly made a very slight improvement, but not anything significant.

I downloaded PCmark8 and ran some benchmarks. Sometimes they run okay and return scores, and sometimes they return invalid results due to "timing invalid"

I bought a Precision M6700 w/ roughly the same specs. In the benchmarks, the M6700 is somewhat slower, but in real life (loading a web page, printing a document, opening a program, etc.) the M6700 takes a quarter of the time as the M4600, so I know there is still something screwed up with the 4600. Any other thoughts?

 

First impression was way to many tabs open - second if you are copying large files frequently, use robocopy or get a GUI file copy replacement like teracopy.
Cleaning off some disk space helps - check if the disk is fragmented. Got all the latest drivers installed? There looks to be a newer BIOS.. You have a 300GB drive in there, I'd swap it to an SSD, you'll get some performance there too.

 

Yup, I like to have a lot of tabs open.

However, the issue exists when Chrome is closed as well. After I freed up the space, I did a defrag. Still have the issue.

I have been updating drivers one by one. So far I have not observed any improvement.