I am working on a computer and wanted to know if anyone had a useful tool that could tell me what a hard drive is running at 100% usage all the time.
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Hard Disk Usage 100%
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You should be able to use the task manager to help you to pin point the software that may be causing the disk to go to 100% continually.
Are you looking for something more specific?
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@Ronnie-Wong Hi Ronnie I am looking for something more specific because the task manager does not show me what is causing the hard drive to be used 100% of the time.
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This can go in a couple of different ways here.
If you're looking at disk space: You may want to dry the WinDirStat.
Windows also comes with the resource monitor itself to help you see how each performance factor is being used (Hard Disk, Memory, CPU and Network).
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@Ronnie-Wong Hi Ronnie I hope this helps you this is what i am seeing in the Task Manager. I don't think it is the AV.
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When you click on resource monitor down at the bottom, and look at the hard drive. It should show more detail than just 100%. I'm asking folks at their coming in from shows!
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@Ronnie-Wong Hi Ronnie this is what I see when I open the Resource Monitor
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I've tried to look around at tools but they seem to be all built into windows now: Here's how you can configure it to help pinpoint the disk i/o issues:
https://www.smartertools.com/blog/2016/07/15-configure-perfmon-to-prevent-disk-issues
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@Ronnie-Wong Thank you, Ronnie, I am also in the process of trying to watch your CCENT 2018 videos as well. Thanks again for the help.
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let me know if I can be of help in that too!
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Anti-virus, disk defragmentation, and paging files are using your three culprits.
Moving paging files to a separate drive or array and adding a lot of ram helps with this. Don't put paging files on RAID 0 ever. I would add a separate hard drive or RAID 1 or 10 array for it.
anti-virus is usually the issue. I switched to Avast pro because each area is a separate thread. Eset/NOD32, CA eTrust,, Symantec love one thread for all things. Just because you have multiple cores doesn't mean anything to Anti-virus, they stay on core 0.
disk defragmentation in Windows 7 to 10 is on by default. It will run in the background. Sometimes it will keep running even with you are using the drives. I usually go in and tweak the settings.
Years ago I invested in an LSI Logic 8708EM2 SAS RAID controller with 128 MB battery cache, SAS cables and Seagate Cheetah drives. I have two 300 GB 15K SAS drives in RAID 1. 1.097GB/s cached reads and 850 MB/s cached writes. I don't need size, I need performance and an array for extreme disk IOs. SSDs and SATA drives can't do the disk IOs I need. My projects are 3-4 days of disk IOs with no break. SATA drives are 8 hours per day. SSDs are fast but suffer from IOs per sector. I tested SSDs and after 2 days, performance dropped 50% and they died in a few months. SATA lasted a few weeks and got cooked. SAS drives are designed for servers. They are 24x7 100% duty cycle. I leave space between them and add panflo fans to cool them. My workstation is in the basement so its never gets about 72F. I also invest into a highend power supply, 20A dedicated circuit and Tripp Lite 20A 2400W line conditioners for clean power.
