HP Probook 4530s great specs, but lagging. Hard Drive

hard drivelagperformance

I have this laptop, which has a i3 processor, 4gb memory, 7200rpm hard drive. So there is nothing wrong with the specs.

Even when I have no applications open, simply closing and opening windows, lags.
Or opening the start menu, or dragging icons across the desktop. sometimes even the cursor lags.

So I checked out the resource monitor, and the resources using disk activity are
svchost
Avast ——- my antivirus, but not much
System (PID 4) —— This is using a huge chunk

The total disk activity fluctuates between %50 – %100

Best Answer

An i3 with 4GB of RAM isn't that good, to be honest. :) But you are correct that, in general, you shouldn't experience "lag" when just closing/opening windows. But what particular "windows" (programs) are you using that are giving you a problem? I think you could get a better answer if you told us how long the lag lasts for, and what other programs may be running.

Also, make sure avast isn't actively running a virus scan. That can take up a lot of resources.

Related Solutions

Windows 7 kills VMWare performance by disk caching

See the last entry here http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1008885

I have seen huge improvements to VM performance after making this change. Just make sure you have enough memory on your host.

Edit the virtual machine settings to reduce I/O usage by using more host memory:

Adding these settings to a virtual machine can reduce the I/O load on the hard disk, however these adjustments require additional memory on the host. Only add these settings if there is sufficient free memory on the host to accommodate all the memory allocated to the virtual machine, otherwise you may cause a memory starvation condition that can reduce performance of all the running virtual machines or possibly affect the host operating system. Use these settings with caution.
Open the .vmx file for the affected virtual machine while it is powered off. Add the following lines to the file using a text editor. For more information, see Editing the .vmx file of a VMware Workstation and VMware Player virtual machine (2057902)

Note: If you are using VMware Server, you may need to restart the VMware Authorization Service (vmware-authd) for changes to take effect.
MemTrimRate = "0" 
mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"
sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE" 
prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "TRUE"
Note: If you are using a Linux host, use the following entry instead of mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE". The mainMem.useNamedFile entry only applies to Windows Hosts.
mainmem.backing = "swap"

Windows – HDD Activity When Computer is Idle

Situation

I had the same problem in Windows 10: after about 5 minutes of system idle, there was a lot of disk activity on data disks (non swap, just data files), which disappeared on just a single mouse move.

The Task Manager didn't show much. The Resource Monitor did show that svhost was causing the disk activity, but didn't show which sub service of it was causing it.

Process Explorer ( https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer.aspx ) does show the sub services. After about 5 minutes of mouse/keyboard idle, defrag.exe started under svchost.

Solution

You can disable it (scheduled defragmentation, the cause) via the Task Scheduler > Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Windows > Defrag > then disable the "ScheduledDefrag". Disabling it removed the problem on my system.

Explanation

Defrag is used to defragment the hard disk. For example, a file can be stored in multiple fragment spread over the hard disk. When the file is read, the hard disk head has to physically move to all the fragments sequentially, which requires some time and thus costs some performance. The defrag process moves the fragments to optimal locations, so that the hard disk head has to move less physical distance, which improves hard disk read and write performance.

Windows starts the defrag process automatically using the Task Scheduler when you idle for 5 minutes, but you can also manually start defrag: right click on a drive letter > Properties > Tools > Optimize. The fragmentation percentage indicates whether there is a need to defrag.

SSDs don't need to be defragmented, because there is no physical head movement. Using defrag on a SSD lowers the life expectancy of a SSD.