Task Manager shows a 100% disc usage almost constantly, tried everything

Question

I've done numerous scans, no malware at all, I've defragmented the drives, disc clean-up, system refresh, factory settings reset, read loads of posts on this, increased/decreased virtual memory, analysed PC and everything seems fine. I just don't know what else to do.

It shows the 100% disc usage on just a small 1 mb/s but sometimes 30 mb/s, the thing causing the most data/s is sometimes "System", but I cant find out what exactly. Disabling firewall and all antivirus programs didn't help.

Solution

Launch Windows' built-in Resource Monitor tool and go to Disk tab. There you'll see a lot of your disk-related activity. You'll be able to see what files are being read/written to, what applications are doing that, which disks are active and a lot of other useful information. It will help you figure what exactly that "System" process is doing.

Comments

[Ramhound]

We need more information. There are dozens of questions like this question and all of them have things you can try. 100% disk usage is a classic sign of bad hardware.

[Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007]

"System" problems are usually a driver issue, and/or a hardware issue as @Ramhound suggests (not necessarily the HDD though). Boot in safe mode -- Still act up? You may (also) want to hit the HDD manufacturer's site and get their recommended drive diagnostics to test your drive.

[Kirk]

At the same time, check for the Higher Level Processes. which will help you which program needs high reads on hard disk.

[magicandre1981]

follow my steps here: pastebin.com/AyxAVU60

[Art Gertner]

I would also recommend to boot into another system. Any linux live CD will do. Boot and see if you get the same issue there. This would help to confirm/disprove HW problem.

[Admin]

If down voting on a response that answers a question correctly please specify why it is that the response wasn't useful.

[DavidPostill]

Please quote the essential parts of the answer from the reference link, as the answer can become invalid if the linked page changes or the target site is unreachable/permanently offline.