Hard drive at 100% highest active usage when playing games

MaxS

Reputable
May 31, 2014
10
0
4,510
Recently I've been having a issue with my HDD (A Western Digital Blue 500GB) where it will go to 100% usage and causing lag when I am playing games that my system should be able to handle, regardless of graphical settings. An example of this is Battlefield 3 freezes quite a bit in accordance with the HDD light. The high usage can also occur when I am doing simple tasks such as opening Spotify and one or two folders.

So far to test it I have tried different SATA ports and cables which have resulted in the same problem, I have performed several virus and malware scans which have come back clean and I have also run the WD diagnostic tool which showed no error's so I really cant figure out what the problem is.
 
Solution
Check memory usage when it starts to happen you may be running out of memory and it's swapping out data from hdd to ram. On my last build when I was on 4gb I got into the 90% usage on memory. I recommend 8GB standard anymore maybe that is all it's doing and not being efficient at it and causing the problems.

MaxS

Reputable
May 31, 2014
10
0
4,510


sorry, I should of included that in the OP, my specs are as follows:

Windows 7 Professional
Intel i5 4670
GTX 750ti
4GB RAM
Gigabyte B85M-D3H Motherboard
500w EVGA Bronze PSU
 

BlacksunKing

Reputable
Jun 20, 2014
147
1
4,760
Check memory usage when it starts to happen you may be running out of memory and it's swapping out data from hdd to ram. On my last build when I was on 4gb I got into the 90% usage on memory. I recommend 8GB standard anymore maybe that is all it's doing and not being efficient at it and causing the problems.
 
Solution

BlacksunKing

Reputable
Jun 20, 2014
147
1
4,760
Yeah I would add another 4GB and see if that resolves the problem. Should be a fairly cheap thing to do and if it still persists after that let us know and we will further troubleshoot with you. You get in games with a lot of players on it and depending what is running in the background you may be pushing the limits on the 4 GB you have and causing it to access the paging file. Glad to help and hope this fixes it for you.