Windows – 100% disk usage on Windows 10 without any apps using it

windowswindows 10

I had a very old Win 10 version, I upgraded to a new one, new one was messed up, screen wouldn't work well and system was completely unresponsive. So I did a fresh installation from a USB, latest Windows version 1709, it worked fine, until yesterday. It's not a problem with the HDD because it works fine on Ubuntu and worked fine on the previous Windows.

The problem: Computer turns extremely slow, practically unusable, task manager shows 100% disk usage, but there are no apps using it.

  • I have tried disabling superfetch, Windows Defender, updating drivers. Nothing worked. Like I said, there are no processes using the disk, not superfetch, nor system or anything else.

  • I have tried using resmon but it didn't show any processes using the disk, Process Explorer didn't even show the 100% usage.

I have noticed that the problem only happens if I let my computer idle for a couple of minutes, even without it going to sleep or letting the screen dim. If I actively use the computer, the problem doesn't happen.

Best Answer

The Current Pending Sector Count is causing your perf issue:

Current Pending Sector Count S.M.A.R.T. parameter is a critical parameter and indicates the current count of unstable sectors (waiting for remapping). The raw value of this attribute indicates the total number of sectors waiting for remapping. Later, when some of these sectors are read successfully, the value is decreased. If errors still occur when reading some sector, the hard drive will try to restore the data, transfer it to the reserved disk area (spare area) and mark this sector as remapped.

So you have 100 unstable sectors where the HDD tries to read the data and store the data somewhere else.

Degradation of this parameter may indicate imminent drive failure. Urgent data backup and hardware replacement is recommended.

So backup the data and replace the HDD with a new drive. Best is to buy a SSD which is faster.

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