SSD 100% usage when doing nothing?

[Thebadgamer98]

I dusted off my old laptop (specs below) recently and begin updating all the drivers and getting it back up to snuff. All drivers I can find are up to date, but it still runs very sluggishly at times, with long delays between inputs and responses. Sometimes it runs, but it tends towards sluggish. I check Task Manager it's slow and it's consistently at 100% disk usage with very little actually MB/s going through.

CrystalDiskMark and HWinfo say it's at 92% and good, but it don't feel good. Is the drive failing slowly or something? Appreciate all your advice!

SPECS
ASUS ROG GL753V
CPU: i7-7700HQ
GPU: GTX 1050
RAM 2x8gb DDR4-2400

 

[Ahhzz]

I would throw HD Sentinel at it. I've turned up many failing hard drives before they tipped in the Event viewer.

 

[micropage7]

are you sure your system is clean? no virus, or nothing unwanted run on background

btw what you run on FF so it took so much memory

 

[DaemonForce]

Kill antimalware and do something about your defrag service host. The rest is odds and ends.

btw what you run on FF so it took so much memory

....Wat?

This is normal behavior for any browser in current year.

It gets worse when you start looking at what really eats memory with a subframe in every other window. Imagine having efficient code. We're not going back.

 

[dgianstefani]

Indexing files or doing other Windows work behind the scenes.

I disable most of that, including system restore. Manual backups are all I need, and Windows search is crap these days anyway.

Check out LTSC editions and https://github.com/amitxv/PC-Tuning

The SanDisk SATA SSDs are mostly cheap crap anyway, so you want to be careful about excessive writes.

At least they're TLC.

 

[micropage7]

Kill antimalware and do something about your defrag service host. The rest is odds and ends.

....Wat?

This is normal behavior for any browser in current year.
View attachment 339210

It gets worse when you start looking at what really eats memory with a subframe in every other window. Imagine having efficient code. We're not going back.

View attachment 339211

it's ok if you use it, but if you don't use it and it still eat so much RAM you need to check it

 

[SPDIF]

There's nothing wrong with the drive at all. Seems like steam is doing updates in the background and maybe also windows, browsers and so on. That is normal after long time sitting there. Just let it alone for an hour or so, until it finished all it tasks, and you see the usage at almost zero. Then restart and do all necessary updates needed, after that you're good to go.

 

[Thebadgamer98]

There's nothing wrong with the drive at all. Seems like steam is doing updates in the background and maybe also windows, browsers and so on. That is normal after long time sitting there. Just let it alone for an hour or so, until it finished all it tasks, and you see the usage at almost zero. Then restart and do all necessary updates needed, after that you're good to go.

I thought the same thing two months ago and yet, it's still happening.

I would throw HD Sentinel at it. I've turned up many failing hard drives before they tipped in the Event viewer.

HD Sentinel found no problems, at least not in the free test.

are you sure your system is clean? no virus, or nothing unwanted run on background

Malwarebytes couldn't find anything wrong, and I haven't noticed any odd behavior besides the sluggishness.

Maybe I'll find a USB and run memtest on it, that might elicit something of note...

 

[Eskimonster]

Just had that happen with my system, i found out windows update was the culprit.
It constantly tryed to update windows, but it was corrupted some way. so it just totally went banana and acted like me pressing F5 on a homepage.
i had to instal a new OS to fix it.

 

[natr0n]

Reboot do an optimize drive and reboot again and it should settle down.

 

[Thebadgamer98]

Reboot do an optimize drive and reboot again and it should settle down.

Tried this a few times over the last month to no avail but ty for the suggestions

Just had that happen with my system, i found out windows update was the culprit.
It constantly tryed to update windows, but it was corrupted some way. so it just totally went banana and acted like me pressing F5 on a homepage.
i had to instal a new OS to fix it.

Gave up and installed windows 11 (replacing windows 10) and so far it's been working. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop but it hasn't yet. The old adage always proves true "When in doubt, reinstall Windows". Thanks!

 

[Ruru]

btw what you run on FF so it took so much memory

Mine is taking 5GB currently with 2 windows and ~20 tabs so I don't see anything special with OP's ~1.6GB consumpion.

 

[R-T-B]

I think the difference is browsing habits. I always close my tabs between sessions. This is my usage right now:

 

[SPDIF]

Tried this a few times over the last month to no avail but ty for the suggestions

Gave up and installed windows 11 (replacing windows 10) and so far it's been working. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop but it hasn't yet. The old adage always proves true "When in doubt, reinstall Windows". Thanks!

Before reinstalling everything, i would have done a secure erase on my SSD, so it's completely reset and will also be faster. When deciding complete reinstall, a Secure Erase is good to start from scratch again. So your SSD don't have to move around old data.

 

[Ruru]

Before reinstalling everything, i would have done a secure erase on my SSD, so it's completely reset and will also be faster. When deciding complete reinstall, a Secure Erase is good to start from scratch again. So your SSD don't have to move around old data.

Good point. I actually had one old Kingston A300 120GB so messed up (even with even after very little usage), that I thought that the drive was defective. Secure erasing it made it to work like new.

 

[SPDIF]

Many people forget that a SSD works completely different then a HDD. Secure Erase makes it as it was new right out the box. Deleting and fast formatting a SSD does not erase old abandoned data. So it has to do a lot of garbage collection and move around old data. So it also will be slower because of that and makes it wear out unnecessary.

Secure Erase deletes and reset your SSD as it was new. Everything is zeroed out.

 

[Thebadgamer98]

Many people forget that a SSD works completely different then a HDD. Secure Erase makes it as it was new right out the box. Deleting and fast formatting a SSD does not erase old abandoned data. So it has to do a lot of garbage collection and move around old data. So it also will be slower because of that and makes it wear out unnecessary.

Secure Erase deletes and reset your SSD as it was new. Everything is zeroed out.

I've heard of Secure Erase but never looked into it, that's a very clear explanation. Thanks!

 

[SPDIF]

It's also a good idea to never fill up your SSD and leave some free space. Your SSD uses this empty space for garbage collection and makes it wear out slower and thus a longer life. Over-Provisioning can increase the endurance of a solid-state drive by distributing the total number of writes and erases across a larger population of NAND flash memory blocks and pages over time.

It also makes your drive stays fast and does not slow down after long time.

 

[Ruru]

It's also a good idea to never fill up your SSD and leave some free space. Your SSD uses this empty space for garbage collection and makes it wear out slower and thus a longer life. Over-Provisioning can increase the endurance of a solid-state drive by distributing the total number of writes and erases across a larger population of NAND flash memory blocks and pages over time.

It also makes your drive stays fast and does not slow down after long time.

I've always had at least 10% of storage left what it comes to SSDs.

 

[SPDIF]

Yes me to, that's what Samsung and other manufacturers always recommend.

If you don't want to think about this the whole time and look how much space is left over, you can make a partition that is smaller then the complete space available. And the space left over is even not formatted but just unused space. Samsung even has made a tool available in their program Magician to do this before or afterwards installation of your OS.

 

[Jacky_BEL]

Maybe allocate the free space also , so it will remain unused.
I had free space taken away by the recent WinRE update shitshow for a larger WinRE partition.