#HDD always at 100% usage

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

earnest elm
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So i just removed the swollen battery out of this laptop and started it up after 6 months and after updating everything there is i needed to update i wanted to move to steam updates for games. So i try it and then i see that it downloads for 6mbps or less or more for like a second then drops to 0 for some time and does that over and over. So i try fixing that seeing if anything works that the internet states. Then i check task mngr and see that the disk drive is constantly at or around 100% so i ask the person that was helping me a bit in tech chat and they told me to go here and that i possibly had to replace the disk drive. Is this true? And if so i have this 2tb external hard drive and i was wondering if i can just replace that HDD with the external one or of i really need to spend money on this old laptop to be able to still use the 900 gigs. (Could just use the external hard drive constantly tbh) Ill be saving for a pc but i wanne try to keep using this laptop untill then.

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silver aspen
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Why is the hdd and ssd in raid??

earnest elm
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idk

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i also saw it today after turning it back on

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dont even know what raid is

silver aspen
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Is the hdd your main drive

earnest elm
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no

silver aspen
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For windows

earnest elm
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C is

silver aspen
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Ok

earnest elm
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since C is small af i only use it for windows

silver aspen
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Check in taskmgr what is using the hdd

earnest elm
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the thing is

silver aspen
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There should be a column called disk in the processes tab

earnest elm
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the list says that barely anything is used

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its not 100%

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it sticks around 50

grizzled flame
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Click the disk column that will sort by disk usage percentage

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Also with old laptop hdds being so slow and there always being something to do in windows, they're always busy. I immediately switched to an ssd when I got my laptop and it's kind of running the same speeds or higher on initial startup, about 12mb/s or higher which was what my old hdd was

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BTW they're busy for about 10min or something like that so if you let it run for 10 min before using it that should help and leave it running, for example overnight if you know you're going to use right when you wake up

earnest elm
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I wont buy a new hdd or ssd for this laptop though

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Not worth it

grizzled flame
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Yep

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Sounds good 👍

earnest elm
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Im trying the optimise and defrag thing while im gonna sleep

earnest elm
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after leaving it on overnight and having it defragment & optmise t seems to nolonger constantly be 100%

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But whenever i open something like steam it skyrockets

earnest elm
fast pike
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its running at 100% but its just that processes tab will sometimes show 50%

whole bay
earnest elm
whole bay
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So it thinks there is just one disk, which is then partitioned into C: and D:
I think

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The problem with that is that with RAID, some parts of C: are also on the HDD and some parts of D: are also on the SSD
I think

earnest elm
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o ok

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how do i disable it

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i dont remember ever enabling it

whole bay
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Tryyyyy... looking through Settings → System → Storage and perhaps the Control Panel

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At worst, backup any important data and do a complete clean wipe, of both drives

earnest elm
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there isnt really any important data on here i can all get it back

earnest elm
earnest elm
whole bay
earnest elm
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dont have that

whole bay
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Yes, it'll completely wipe Windows as well

earnest elm
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dont even have a usb here i think

whole bay
whole bay
earnest elm
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a what?

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cant i just shift delete everything in the drives lmao

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or wont a factory reset wipe everything

whole bay
whole bay
whole bay
earnest elm
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dont think i have that aswell

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wouldnt even know what to look for

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isnt there a way to just disable raid

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it seems to have been enabled in the time i havent been using this laptop

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before i stopped using it for a bit it never said raid

whole bay
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Hmm

earnest elm
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when i google it it says i need to go into my bios

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after googling more it appears that since i removed the swollen battery it might be that (its running on AC rn) the drives went into raid mode cause of that

vital hound
earnest elm
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yea ik

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its a old laptop

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and im not gonna buy a new SSD for it

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better of saving that money for apc

drifting sun
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The HDD is having to work hard raiding with the much faster SSD I think.

earnest elm
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i cant disable it

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i tried the google way as like 200 sites said how to disable raid and they all said to go to the advanced tab in bios but HP laptops are for some reason all blocked from the advanced tab

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its suddenly not using 100% constantly anymore

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after i was trying to disable raid in bios and started up again its not 100% anymore

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i did also change some startup config stuff but

grizzled flame
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That's kinda weird and little bit scary but ig don't touch it now

earnest elm
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real

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if it works it works

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what i changed from startup config was to only launch service stuff

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and not like user instaleld stuff

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maybe that helped

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im also cleaning my drives a bit

grizzled flame
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You will probably want to restart it every now and then just to like refresh the computer or something

earnest elm
grizzled flame
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Also ssds are very cheap like 40 bucks for a 240gb

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I mean have you looked at any

earnest elm
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i looked up my laptop model and stuff since i wanted to upgrade its ram

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but idk

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I also wouldnt even know what to look for in a ssd

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outside of size

grizzled flame
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Not much

earnest elm
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would want 2tb

grizzled flame
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Not the bad brands, I'm not sure which ones to stay away from but yeah

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You got it probably

earnest elm
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crucial site has the laptop

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and some drives

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1tb for 90 bucks

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but its so much

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i dont want to spend 100 bucks that i could use on a pc

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also i dont really have 100 bucks to spend rn

earnest elm
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If i had the money i would order it rn and install it but i dont so

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gotta live with the raid hdd

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Now the C drive goes to 100%

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oh nvm ik why

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its normal for what im doing

earnest elm
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ITS FINALLY FULLY INSTALLING

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no breakups

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fuck i jinxed it

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it was only small though

woeful cliff
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Open Disk Management then take a screenshot and send it here. I'm curious to know exactly how this RAID configuration is setup on your machine...

earnest elm
woeful cliff
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Hmm welp, that doesn't look like RAID to me, so I have no idea where the "(RAID)" text in task manager comes from in your case.

earnest elm
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maybe it isnt in raid but it says it is

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laptop is old could be a bug or smthing idk

whole bay
woeful cliff
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Ah righto, it might be a new enough laptop that the UEFI (BIOS) comes with disks configured as "RAID" by default, even if they're being used as singular standalone drives. Likely has to do with motherboards that offer advanced drive control / statistics / maintenance by way of something like the Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers vs. just having the disks communicating in AHCI mode. This is usually all transparent to the end user, and does not normally cause heavy disk activity, so won't be the cause 100% disk use here.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/my-ssd-is-shown-as-type-ssd-raid-in-the-task/9461af50-357a-4676-8b1f-a140ee815caf

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We've run into this deploying batches of laptops at work before - while we certainly could leave the singular drives as RAID in the UEFI (BIOS) as Windows / our deployment tool would likely install the correct drivers after installation... the same deployment tool / Windows installation ISO doesn't tend to like RAID enabled during installation, so we just turn it off.

earnest elm
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ok

grizzled flame
woeful cliff
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Erm, well, no - since this is how Windows was installed, turning it off after the fact may break things.

whole bay
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Hence why
Grab an installer USB
And reinstall

earnest elm
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Hdd working fine now tbh

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Installing stuff with as good as no breakups and its not at 100 the entire time