My ''Drive 0 (C:D:)'' usage suddenly rises up to 100%

[BeTheNoob]

Hello all,

for a few days I have been facing this weird problem and have not been able to figure out what the cause and solution is.

So when I open my taskmanager and go to the 'Performance' tab, I see that my Drive 0 (C usage sometimes randomly rises upto 100% usage; as seen in the screenshot provided.

If hoped someone could tell me why this is happening, because when it does, I don't seem to be having internetconnection (not sure whether that's a coincidence or a symptom though!!).

My laptop-specs:
OS: Windows 8.1
Systemtype: x64 bits
CPU: AMD A8-5550m, clockspeed 2,1GHz.
RAM: 4GB

If you need more info, let me know

Thanks in advance!!
~ BeTheNoob


P.S.:
In the screenshot I translated the Dutch names into English and wrote those in red.

 

[carnageX]

Next time it does that, open up the Resource Monitor (can get to it from Task Manager, via the link in the bottom-left corner, that has the speed-dial icon), and go to the Disk tab and sort by the Total Read/Write column and to see what file(s) and/or service(s) are taking hitting the disk.

 

[BeTheNoob]

Alright, thanks, next time it happens I will make sure to check that tab to see what's causing it. I'll let ya know whether I found it or not.

 

[BeTheNoob]

Next time it does that, open up the Resource Monitor (can get to it from Task Manager, via the link in the bottom-left corner, that has the speed-dial icon), and go to the Disk tab and sort by the Total Read/Write column and to see what file(s) and/or service(s) are taking hitting the disk.

Alright, I kept my eye on this for a while and stumbled onto this:

A few applications seem to be causing the sudden and high rise in disk-usage:
- System
- Svchost.exe
- Taskhost.exe
- AvastSvc.exe
However, it looks like all of these are system-related (or anti-virus related in AvastSvc's case) applications and I doubt that I should be stopping those processes since that can be dangerous, right?

Do you have any solution to this? What might be the cause for these applications/processes to take up so much disk-usage?

Thank you very much for your answer in advance,

BeTheNoob

 

[carnageX]

Depends on what they're doing. Do you have Windows Update to download/install updates automatically? If so, you could try changing that option within Windows Update to "Notify but do not download automatically".

You can see deeper as to what each process/service is doing if you run Process Explorer and see what they're doing: Process Explorer

 

[BeTheNoob]

Alright, thank you I will try those suggestions for now

 

[carnageX]

Since you have 8GB of RAM, you could also probably either get rid of, or reduce your page file (virtual memory). Or at the very least, set the min/max to the same size so that it's not adjusting.