Your system is experiencing very high disk usage regardless of activity.
Your system is experiencing very high disk usage regardless of activity.
Hello, I've been facing some issues with my hard disk and SSD recently. Over the past couple of months, my system has shown a significant increase in HDD usage. Initially it wasn't too severe, but it gradually worsened. At that time, I considered replacing the SSD, so I did just that. After installing a new Windows 10 Pro N on it, everything seemed fine at first – the high disk usage disappeared and the system ran smoothly. However, after about an hour, the same problems resurfaced. Within a few hours, the excessive disk activity made the computer unusable. Booting took between 30 to 45 minutes, and once it started, it took another 15 minutes for anything to stabilize. I tried various solutions but none resolved the issue. I even reformatted both the SSD and HDD, reinstalled Windows, yet the same problems persisted every time. After an hour since the install, everything would start using the disk at extreme levels. My suspicion is it might be a hardware fault – possibly a faulty HDD or SSD, or even a RAM issue. Although I repeated everything after each change, the system would eventually crash. I’m guessing a driver problem from one of the hardware components is causing this, but I can’t pinpoint it. I also checked if Windows Update had installed any problematic drivers, but my PC wasn’t connected to Wi-Fi at the time. Here are some fixes I attempted: 1. Clean boot of Windows 10 Pro N/Windows 11 2. Disabled all startup items and tried a safe boot 3. Ran CHKDSK 4. Cleared temporary files 5. Defragmented the disks 6. Ran multiple antivirus scans followed by disabling them 7. Reset virtual memory 8. Turned off Superfetch and telemetry services 9. Disabled System Maintenance 10. Changed energy settings to high performance 11. Installed storAHCI.sys (three SATA drivers available) 12. Reinstalled all SATA and disk drivers 13. Updated graphics card drivers? 14. Performed a full and online scan with Windows Defender 15. Rebuilt the search index 16. Completely disabled the search index 17. Turned off Windows Update 18. Disabled Windows Search 19. Shut down DiagTrack Service 20. Removed physical RAM and disk drives, then reconnected them. There might be more fixes, but I’m running out of ideas. I’m getting really frustrated and might have to give up. Thanks in advance for your help. P.S.: The disks also show very slow response times, ranging from 300 ms to 30,000 ms.
You're facing a challenging situation. It seems like a compromised device is spreading across your network, possibly due to hardware failure. Despite heavy disk activity, it might not be reaching full capacity—maybe it's still operational. The symptoms of extreme usage and slow response suggest the system is operating near its limits.
In Task Manager, select the performance section and click "Open Resource Monitor." Start it, navigate to the disk tab, and check the disk activity area. Share your observations. Questions to consider: For new installations, are there other devices connected to the same network? Do they share the same username and password? Have you disconnected the network during a fresh setup? Does the problem persist even without connecting? Did the issue appear when booting in safe mode? What is the motherboard and CPU model? How much RAM is currently installed?
Unfortunately yeah, pic below mainly steam and opera gx but I also tested not installing them and nothing changed. Also pics below I took the picture ( sorry btw had to take it with phone because the computer wouldnt respond) but the main thing that creates the io changes all the time, sometimes its system other times its windows search and somethimes its just something like phone experiance. 1- I do have a laptop on the network but it does not have the same user 2- Yes it does , actualy thats what confuses me the most 3- yes it was still present in safe mode 4- MSİ A320 MA PRO / 16 gigs of ram
PhoneExpienceHost and clipboard appear near the top of disk activity. You can view Disk Activity in the Resource Monitor, sort by "Total," and expand files to see which programs are running. Your screenshot didn’t capture Disk Activity when usage was only 2% (it was at 100%).
Those R/W speeds seem extremely slow given how much of the time the system is on. It probably points to a poor response time issue. I suspect the hardware might be struggling. Maybe a faulty chipset is the culprit.