Disk usage always at 100%

[PillowBillow]

Everytime I download something now, my download speed is on and off because the usage of my hard drive is really high (Usually 99-100%). Why is this because it's no where near full, and the download speed was fine in the past but maybe something happened..?
I don't know if this helps but my main hard drive is a "Toshiba MK7559GSXP ATA Device"

Thank you in advance.

[CursedPanther]

Just downloading stuff or something else like installing games on Steam?

[PillowBillow]

Originally posted by CursedPanther:

Just downloading stuff or something else like installing games on Steam?

Yes, installing games has been taking "forever" lately. In the past, I would be able to download things at a rate of 10+ mb/s but now it goes no higher than 3 mb/s or less. I even close programs so it can prioritize Steam while downloading but it doesn't seem to help...

[Supafly]

My simple and educated guess would be its normal and expected based on you HDD specs.

Complicated and more detailed reasoning behind my response:
First of all I just downloaded a game I havn't installed to use as example, Peaked at 9.2MB/s down.

My disk usage fluctuated between 5-15% while downloading for the first few minutes. This includes usage caused by my AV scanning everything as it comes down.
Usage spiked to 90%+ whilst still downloading files, asset and such because parts of the downlands were also being unpacked, organised and installed all at the same time.

Comparing the specs of My HDD to your HDD

Mine Yours
RPM 7,200 5,400
Cache 64MB 8MB
Sata Speed 6Gb/s 3Gb/s

My drive has better specs and is faster than yours and still reaches 90%+ so I'd say it is completely normal for you disk usage to hit 100%. You could be right in that while at 100% it is slowing you download speed, as your drive is not fast enough to write downloaded data while unpacking, organising and installing everything all at once.

If you want to prevent speed ups and downs to stop your drive hitting 100% I can only suggest capping download speed although personally I wouldn't bother.
To cap speeds
Steam > Settings > Downloads > Limit bandwidth to > select speed

Starting just below your max download speed and gradually adjust speed down in increments until you find one your happy with.

Edit: Forgot to say, defraging your drive might help

[PillowBillow]

Originally posted by Supafly:

My simple and educated guess would be its normal and expected based on you HDD specs.

Complicated and more detailed reasoning behind my response:
First of all I just downloaded a game I havn't installed to use as example, Peaked at 9.2MB/s down.

My disk usage fluctuated between 5-15% while downloading for the first few minutes. This includes usage caused by my AV scanning everything as it comes down.
Usage spiked to 90%+ whilst still downloading files, asset and such because parts of the downlands were also being unpacked, organised and installed all at the same time.

Comparing the specs of My HDD to your HDD

Mine Yours
RPM 7,200 5,400
Cache 64MB 8MB
Sata Speed 6Gb/s 3Gb/s

My drive has better specs and is faster than yours and still reaches 90%+ so I'd say it is completely normal for you disk usage to hit 100%. You could be right in that while at 100% it is slowing you download speed, as your drive is not fast enough to write downloaded data while unpacking, organising and installing everything all at once.

If you want to prevent speed ups and downs to stop your drive hitting 100% I can only suggest capping download speed although personally I wouldn't bother.
To cap speeds
Steam > Settings > Downloads > Limit bandwidth to > select speed

Starting just below your max download speed and gradually adjust speed down in increments until you find one your happy with.

Edit: Forgot to say, defraging your drive might help

Thank you for that information, seems to me I may just have to invest in a new hard drive.
But if you don't mind me asking, what is defraging? Can it harm the content within my drive?

[76561198343548661]

Run malware and virus scan . Check for background processes . Defrag the hdd . Use CCleaner to clearup the hdd from unneeded stuff . Check the startup applications

My hdd is 500GB and my download and upload speed are 80Mbit/s

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

Something else is using the disk I guess. How much RAM do you got? Some large program running and swapping? Is it somewhat loaded even if you don't download on Steam? Whats the average respons time according to the task manager when you do nothing? How much is being written and read to it then?

It's a 2.5" 5400 RPM drive so it will be slower than a 3.5" 7200 RPM drive but it should of course be able to deal with ~10 MB/s downloads from Steam as long as something else isn't messing with it anyway.

[Azza ☠]

My Computer > Drive Letter > Right-click > Properties > Tools > Check for errors and also Defrag

Defrag = Reordering the files on the hard drive to better seek upon. Since a HDD (Hard drive) spins plates, it needs to spin over multiple areas to find large files. Defrag will just order that better so the drive doesn't have to thrash around as much per file as it's in an order to follow. Win 10 however automatically defrags for you. SSD (Solid state drives) don't need defrag, as it's memory lookup, rather than spinning plates.

Consider downloading, updating and running SpyBot (free edition) or similar anti-malware scanner: https://www.safer-networking.org/

Consider downloading and running CCleaner for junk/temp files clean up and spring cleaning: https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

If you need a hard drive replacement, consider:

Western Digital Black Edition 2TB or larger (Suggest model: WD4003FZEX) - if you are looking for large space for gaming performance.

or

Samsung 850 Pro SSD 256GB - if you are looking for smaller space, but even better overall system performance.

[PillowBillow]

Originally posted by Etnopluralism / Aliquis:

Something else is using the disk I guess. How much RAM do you got? Some large program running and swapping? Is it somewhat loaded even if you don't download on Steam? Whats the average respons time according to the task manager when you do nothing? How much is being written and read to it then?

It's a 2.5" 5400 RPM drive so it will be slower than a 3.5" 7200 RPM drive but it should of course be able to deal with ~10 MB/s downloads from Steam as long as something else isn't messing with it anyway.

To respond to your questions, I have 8gb of RAM. When I'm not downloading anything, right now (w/ skype, ccleaner, and chrome up) my disk usage is at 0-4% as is. According to task manager that is. I guess it just jumps up to 100% when I download games, and the speed becomes inconsistent.

Originally posted by Azza ☠:

My Computer > Drive Letter > Right-click > Properties > Tools > Check for errors and also Defrag

Defrag = Reordering the files on the hard drive to better seek upon. Since a HDD (Hard drive) spins plates, it needs to spin over multiple areas to find large files. Defrag will just order that better so the drive doesn't have to thrash around as much per file as it's in an order to follow. Win 10 however automatically defrags for you. SSD (Solid state drives) don't need defrag, as it's memory lookup, rather than spinning plates.

Consider downloading, updating and running SpyBot (free edition) or similar anti-malware scanner: https://www.safer-networking.org/

Consider downloading and running CCleaner for junk/temp files clean up and spring cleaning: https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

If you need a hard drive replacement, consider:

Western Digital Black Edition 2TB or larger (Suggest model: WD4003FZEX) - if you are looking for large space for gaming performance.

or

Samsung 850 Pro SSD 256GB - if you are looking for smaller space, but even better overall system performance.

I will try the defrag process right now.

[chiefputsilao✖️ping]

5400rpm hdd is slow...

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

Originally posted by Salmon:

Originally posted by Etnopluralism / Aliquis:

Something else is using the disk I guess. How much RAM do you got? Some large program running and swapping? Is it somewhat loaded even if you don't download on Steam? Whats the average respons time according to the task manager when you do nothing? How much is being written and read to it then?

It's a 2.5" 5400 RPM drive so it will be slower than a 3.5" 7200 RPM drive but it should of course be able to deal with ~10 MB/s downloads from Steam as long as something else isn't messing with it anyway.

To respond to your questions, I have 8gb of RAM. When I'm not downloading anything, right now (w/ skype, ccleaner, and chrome up) my disk usage is at 0-4% as is. According to task manager that is. I guess it just jumps up to 100% when I download games, and the speed becomes inconsistent.

8 GB should be just fine for just Windows or Windows + normal and beyond web-browsing. 0-4% seem pretty normal. If the drive was very full and heavily fragmented then maybe not since it's not all that full.. Run som decent defrag and keep on using the same program for it since they may have different strategies for how to arrange the data (like if you use MyDefrag it has its idea for what way make sense to arrange the file in and if you then use some trial for payment software that one may do something else and hence result in more files being moved than necessary.) Disable anti-virus why you run the defrag or maybe when you do the Steam download to see if that make any difference.

I assume your computer shouldn't have an issue with it.

Originally posted by chiefputsi✖️ping:

5400rpm hdd is slow...

I have a 5400 RPM 3 TB drive for my Steam games and I can fetch them in the ~12 MB/s my Internet connection is good for.

His drive is 2.5" and likely smaller in capacity but it should be able to handle 10 MB / s anyhow right?

As for swapping I use a 250 GB EVO 850 SSD now so that affect me less now but I've got experience with that too.. Of course swapping on 2.5" 5400 RPM HDD is way worse than on SSD but since the machine as claimed isn't all that loaded ..

Personally I have a Windows which don't run a gazillion of crap in the background, maybe his computer do.

Reminds me of the Humble bundle with System mechanic or whatever it was called which helped flag unnecessary programs, there's likely a lot of such programs.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Yes when all you have is a HDD, when you download something like a Steam game, you basically need to walk away and let it finish. Cause it will tie up the drive quite a bit.

This is why folks should get SSD and install OS to that.
The OS doesn't turn into a pretzel when you go that route.

[Kain]

Originally posted by PillowBillow:

Everytime I download something now, my download speed is on and off because the usage of my hard drive is really high (Usually 99-100%). Why is this because it's no where near full, and the download speed was fine in the past but maybe something happened..?
I don't know if this helps but my main hard drive is a "Toshiba MK7559GSXP ATA Device"

Thank you in advance. :2016weiner:

I wasn't even downloading anything and steam was using 100% of a 500 GB HDD. Once I uninstalled steam it went down to normal levels.

Other than that, steam was locking up my entire computer making it difficult for me to even use it for work.

[Kain]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Yes when all you have is a HDD, when you download something like a Steam game, you basically need to walk away and let it finish. Cause it will tie up the drive quite a bit.

This is why folks should get SSD and install OS to that.
The OS doesn't turn into a pretzel when you go that route.

I have an SDD for my OS and steam still drained a 500 GB HDD. That is when it wasn't even running or installing anything to my knowledge.

[[☥] - CJ -]

How much space is available on the HDD?
OS SSD should have 50GB+ of free space available for normal operation.

And you could have just CLOSED Steam, unless thats what you meant.

Also, you seem to be under the misconception that Usage = Used Capacity
It doesnt

It doesnt matter how full a drive is, 100% simply means that its doing whatever its doing at the speed its rated for, or not rated for in some cases. (For future reference)

Also, make sure you defrag the HDD, its apparent performance could have been decreased if its never been defragged before.

All in all, it sounds like your information on how and why a PC does certain things should be updated/corrected.

And you could have made a new thread, this thread is from 2017.

[_I_]

watch the disk activity line on steam download page
if its maxed, the disk will be at 100%