# HDD High response time in windows 10



## Master (Mar 17, 2018)

Hello everyone, I am facing strangely high response time and HDD usage in windows 10 on one of my drives. 
I have 3 HDDs, 1 500Gb Blue Caviar (SATA 2.6), 1 1Tr Green Caviar( SATA 2.6) and 1 1Tr Blue Caviar(SATA 3) which hosts the operating system. 
The problem is whenever I open My Computer or try to even view a folder in a partition in the 3rd drive (i.e. 1tr Blue Caviar), the HDD usage hits 99~100% and response time gets very high. 
This is not the case for other drives though. 
This is getting worse, I have tried disabling Windows Search and Superfetch as well but nothing helped. 
I ran HDD Tune Pro and the drive itself seems fine.  








Simply opening the File Explorer, or My Computer, results in a very high utilization and response time for the drive in question and not the other two! 
even browsing the drive causes this, and when I copy some thing, this gets worse!


I copied one mkv file (68Mb) in the 500Gb drive and played it, the usage never went up more than 4~5% whereas when I copied it into the drive in question (partition F e.g), the usage goes to 99% for two seconds and the drops to around 2, 3%.

What is wrong here and how can I fix this?
Thank you all in advance


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## pigulici (Mar 17, 2018)

Scan the hdd for bad blocks.


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## Toothless (Mar 17, 2018)

Should pull up task manager and see what is eating the usage. Could be a virus type issue or just Windows being dumb since you said it's the boot drive. Honestly why you don't have an SSD in a system like that is questionable.

Oh and don't disable Superfetch because it won't fix anything.


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## 95Viper (Mar 17, 2018)

Scan the drive for errors, like pigulici stated.
Try re-installing your Kaspersky A/V... I had to do that before for basically the same type of problem.


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## newtekie1 (Mar 17, 2018)

Seems pretty normal for a HDD that is being used as the system drive in Windows 10.  Especially a slower drive like the WD Blue.

Everything you do on the drive has to share the drive with Windows doing things.  So when you are asking a HDD to do two things at once, the response time gets high and the drive stalls.  It is what HDDs do, and why SSDs exist.

It is also why even getting a small SSD just for the OS helps out a system greatly.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 17, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> Seems pretty normal for a HDD that is being used as the system drive in Windows 10.  Especially a slower drive like the WD Blue.
> 
> Everything you do on the drive has to share the drive with Windows doing things.  So when you are asking a HDD to do two things at once, the response time gets high and the drive stalls.  It is what HDDs do, and why SSDs exist.
> 
> It is also why even getting a small SSD just for the OS helps out a system greatly.


I agree but felt it important to mention, it's got worse, i too Have the same issues on two PC's that cannot at this time be fitted with ssds one i game on occasionally at a mates, it's a second standby pc so is not in an upgrade cycle.
But since the fall update I've noted some really poor drive characteristics on those pcs , they're getting harder to stand using.


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## Jetster (Mar 17, 2018)

Pull all the data off the drive. Run diskpart to format and create you single partition. Put data back and see if it better. If this is the system drive not much you can do but do a clean install after format with diskpart and don't used a bunch of partitions. And don't cramp your OS.

What I'm thinking is you have an old partition or hidden system file the is confusing your searches

Removing a partition in disk management does not get everything. Formating a partition does not get everything.


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## Master (Mar 17, 2018)

Toothless said:


> Should pull up task manager and see what is eating the usage. Could be a virus type issue or just Windows being dumb since you said it's the boot drive. Honestly why you don't have an SSD in a system like that is questionable.
> 
> Oh and don't disable Superfetch because it won't fix anything.


Its the System process always.
I ran a test with HDD Tune Pro and the disk seems to be fine : 


 

Actually I was planning on getting one, but at the moment I need to get this fixed. 
I will now start a system whole scan and see if there is a malware causing this ( I highly doubt that though)


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## pigulici (Mar 17, 2018)

Try another sata cable and/or sata port.


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## Master (Mar 17, 2018)

Thank you everyone, 
After the scan, I'm going to test other options as well.


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## _JP_ (Mar 17, 2018)

Master said:


> Its the System process always.


I've seen this behavior too with Win10 1709. Even in SSDs, not being that noticeable because of their speed.
I haven't extensively tested it, but I noticed that process starts taxing the disk when updates are being applied, not only system related, windows' own apps cause this.
The more apps you have, the longer it takes...or when it's time to do the monthly system updates. 
Try to look into the task scheduler, if there's any update tasks piling up at the same time, creating that high response time.


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## Toothless (Mar 17, 2018)

Master said:


> Its the System process always.
> I ran a test with HDD Tune Pro and the disk seems to be fine :
> View attachment 98436
> 
> ...


The drive is fine, it's Windows trying to do things and your boot drive being to slow. Get an SSD for the OS and call it good.


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## rtwjunkie (Mar 17, 2018)

Master said:


> Thank you everyone,
> After the scan, I'm going to test other options as well.


Do you have access to a second hand market?  I think the others are right, an SSD may eliminate most of this.  Can you get a relatively cheap, used SSD?


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 17, 2018)

rtwjunkie said:


> Do you have access to a second hand market?  I think the others are right, an SSD may eliminate most of this.  Can you get a relatively cheap, used SSD?


A fair few out there are not going to be able to get a ssd dude though I agree since I don't see this on ssd based systems but I have seen it on business ones with hdds, it would be nice to find out what has changed since earlier versions of win10  if any one has any ideas


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## Toothless (Mar 17, 2018)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> A fair few out there are not going to be able to get a ssd dude though I agree since I don't see this on ssd based systems but I have seen it on business ones with hdds, it would be nice to find out what has changed since earlier versions of win10  if any one has any ideas


Honestly if OP can get a GTX1080, he can get a $50 120GB SSD unless he got the card for free. In that case I gotta know where this free GPU land is and how many organs I need to sell to get there.


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 17, 2018)

Another test is Hitachi Drive Fitness test.

Get Malwarebytes Antimalware and Super Antispyware and run those 2, if it finds something in there, it could be a mining trojan.

Open event viewer too, task manager, services.msc, see all what's running.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 17, 2018)

Toothless said:


> Honestly if OP can get a GTX1080, he can get a $50 120GB SSD unless he got the card for free. In that case I gotta know where this free GPU land is and how many organs I need to sell to get there.


yeah i get that fair enough im out but personally im expecting a few more of these types of thread, i tend to loiter so as to find that nugget of info that makes a difference but its not here today and im not arguing a point just asking a question.


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## rtwjunkie (Mar 17, 2018)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> A fair few out there are not going to be able to get a ssd dude though I agree since I don't see this on ssd based systems but I have seen it on business ones with hdds, it would be nice to find out what has changed since earlier versions of win10  if any one has any ideas


I know, man. I see he is on Iran, so that’s why I suggested even a second hand market.


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## Vayra86 (Mar 23, 2018)

FWIW I have also seen extremely high system drive activity on earlier Windows 10 builds shortly after installing the OS.

This makes me doubt its specific to Fall update or anything, but rather just a Windows 10 thing that might go away after a while. I don't see it happen some longer time after a big update has passed.


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## John Naylor (Mar 23, 2018)

1.  Disconnect LAN cable
2.  Disable AV and see if there's any change

If that's not it, I'd recommend a OS reinstall.   I don't think it's a hardware issue although those drives are rather on the slow side.  Have test box here w/ (2) SSDs (2) SSHDs and (1) HD, all bootable)  and when we switch them up, user's don't notice ... so what you are seeing sounds like it's well outside type of storage speed issues.  Plus, since it's just one of the 3 drives would rule that out. anyway.  I have observed such behavior before , mostly on networked drives ... but a simple system reboot makes it disappear.

While you are at it, make sure OS drive is on lowest numbered SATA port.

Those drives also sound rather old and areal density has improved since then, so I'd think about how much klife is left oin them.  We find a 250 GB SSD / 2 TB SSHD makes a cost effective solution for most storage needs   A Samsiung Evo and 2 TB 7200 rpm SSHD can be had for $180 ... you might not have the best benchmarks but ya won't get any more work done at the office and ya won't reach a further checkpoint in a game if ya had 2 TB SSD.


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## Master (Apr 3, 2018)

Thank you everyone. Heres the update. 
The culprit for the huge degradation in performance was not a virus, or a malware or the drive hosting the OS, etc but the 'automatic defragmentation" in windows 10!
When I disabled the auto defragementation by chance , I noticed everything started to work smoothly again! 
It was on by default, and I guess as I started installing more software, and nearly all my partitions began to be completely filled, doing auto defragmentation became very taxing! 



rtwjunkie said:


> Do you have access to a second hand market?  I think the others are right, an SSD may eliminate most of this.  Can you get a relatively cheap, used SSD?





theoneandonlymrk said:


> A fair few out there are not going to be able to get a ssd dude though I agree since I don't see this on ssd based systems but I have seen it on business ones with hdds, it would be nice to find out what has changed since earlier versions of win10  if any one has any ideas





Toothless said:


> Honestly if OP can get a GTX1080, he can get a $50 120GB SSD unless he got the card for free. In that case I gotta know where this free GPU land is and how many organs I need to sell to get there.



Actually I got a second hand Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250Gb from my brother, and it was after installing this very drive, that made me look at Windows defragment and you know the rest.
I also didn't go for a SSD before, since Its very expensive here, and most likely I wont be able to use it long enough before it gets destroyed! 
I have 20G + RAM, and I also download alot, just last month I had downloaded nearly 300GBs! , and looking at the scale, I guess the current SSD would soon die as well (pagefiles, downloads, etc) since its Wear Level is already at 45, and it has 8.9TB of data written to it in the past 10 Months by my brother. 
My PC is nearly always on and training something and furthermore having all the conditions taken into account, it seems SSD Drives like the ones I can afford at the moment,  at this rate are not for me.
They will wear very quickly and I fear I lose valuable data.
So I can have more ease of mind dealing with good old HDDs rather than using fast but very demanding SSDs. (seems there are many precautionary steps needed to be taken when dealing with SSDs anyway, disabling hibernation, pagefile, superfetch, etc).

If I'm mistaken, I'd appreciate any corrections on SSDs part as I only had some limited search on the subject, yet those that I found werent good at all.


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## rtwjunkie (Apr 3, 2018)

Thank you for letting us know that you found your problem.  It always help others to know how a problem was fixed when they come to TPU later.  I’m sure you are relieved it was not major!


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