High Disk Usage on Windows 10

hard-drive windows-10 memory

8,667

The trace shows that the Antimalware service (Windows Defender) is causing most disk IO and here it hangs at scanning the MFT (Master File Table) and reading data from the pagefile:

For me Defender/Microsoft Security Essentials were always slow and I never used them. Also try a different AV suite.

8,667

Abhishek Agarwal

Software Developer, Hyderabad, India

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Abhishek Agarwal over 1 year
I have a Dell Inspiron Core i5 with 4 GB RAM and 500 GB hard disk. After upgrading to windows 10 from 8.1, I am constantly facing a high disk usage problem which is causing my machine to run a ot slower than usual. The processes that usually have a high disk usage are as follows:
1. Antimalware service executable
2. System and compressed memory
Is there any workaround for this issue?
- magicandre1981 almost 8 years
  
  don't use Windows defender, install a 3rd party Anti-Virus tool
- Abhishek Agarwal almost 8 years
  
  i was using avira up until now. The same problem was there too.
- magicandre1981 almost 8 years
  
  Install the WPT (part of the Win10 SDK: dev.windows.com/en-us/downloads/windows-10-sdk), run WPRUI.exe, select First Level, CPU usage, DiskIO, FileIO and click to start. Now capture 1 minute of the DiskIO. After 1 minute click on Save. Zip the large ETL file into zip/RAR file, upload the zip (OneDrive, dropbox, google drive) and post the share link here.
- Abhishek Agarwal almost 8 years
  
  do i need to install the entire sdk? its a 2.5 gb installation.
- magicandre1981 almost 8 years
  
  only the Windows Performance Toolkit
- benjamin almost 8 years
  
  Not really an answer but I have had the same experience with about 5 other computers which I have upgraded. After a day or two the high disk usage was gone - I don't know though what is causing it. Never had this problem again. How long are you using windows 10 now?
- Abhishek Agarwal almost 8 years
  
  Using it for over a year now. The problem was always there but its getting really bothersome these days. Cant work without something or the other crashing every other second.
- magicandre1981 almost 8 years
  
  have you instaleld only the WPT and captured the trace?
- Abhishek Agarwal almost 8 years
  
  @magicandre1981 yeah, Here: drive.google.com/file/d/0B-LesTcmHNFySFJHSi1xdktBQWs/…
Abhishek Agarwal almost 8 years

You mean i should just get another software instead of defender? Which would you recommend(a free one preferably)?
magicandre1981 almost 8 years

try AvastFree or Avira AntiVir
Abhishek Agarwal almost 8 years

I was using avira till now. It also had a high disk usage
magicandre1981 almost 8 years

try Avast and look if you also see the high Disk usage
Abhishek Agarwal almost 8 years

okay. Going to do that now.
Abhishek Agarwal almost 8 years

Installing avast helped with the anti malware process but the 'system and compressed memory' process is still using 100% disk
magicandre1981 almost 8 years

capture/share a new diskIO trace when you see the 100% Disk usage.
magicandre1981 almost 8 years

have you captured a new trace when using Avast
Abhishek Agarwal over 7 years

hey sorry for the late reply. Nothing helped with the disk usage issue, so i went ahead and upgraded my ram from 4GB to 8 GB and that has brought down the disk usage for now.
magicandre1981 over 7 years

@AbhishekAgarwal ok, thanks for the reply. More RAM causes less paging so yeah, this improves the situation