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I am in big trouble since last few weeks... I am getting 100% disk utilization on my Windows, while I can see no process is significantly using the disk. The issue is faced by many as you can see there are many many threads on this:

This is how it looks like:

100% disk usage

enter image description here

No process is significantly using the disk

enter image description here

Also I created a thread on answers.microsoft.com to ask where to find the registry key to tweak HDD driver as recommended by microsoft's site. But of no use.

I tried, stopping many services, clean boot, running process explorer to checks whats using disk the most, as suggested by many online threads. In fact, I formatted by C: drive and installed clean Windows 10. But issue came back!!!

Let me tell me something about my machine: its Dell XPS 15 L502X. Its 2011 edition. It has 16 GB RAM, quad core i7 2630QM. This machine worked perfect with Windows 7,8 and 10 for so many years but now its failing. As I told above I tried everything thats noted in various sites, but nothing helped.

Now I recalled that few months back I was trying to copy paste some big video file to pendrive and I was getting another famous error "Cannot read from source file issue". I didnt paid much attention to it. Left those video files as is. I remember I tried running chkdsk with no success. Now I started feeling that the issue was aggravated. I felt this must be due to bad sectors. So I cut pasted all files in the drives to external hard disk using TeraCopy software. It gives list of files that failed to copy. So I deleted those files when TeraCopy was not able to move them and then recovered those files using EASEUS recovery tool. Then I hard formatted (not quick format) thinking that it will fix bad sectors. This worked for E: drive.

But while doing same for F: drive, it got all screwed. First while recovering files, I was getting blue screen of death. So I left those files unrecovered and went on to hard format the drive. But now after almost 5 hours its barely 30% done.

One more observation, many times after random killing of processes (mostly onedrive which had folder in F: drive), my disk utility used to come to normal after few minutes.

Q1. So should I conclude its hard disk which is culprit here?

Q2. Will this formatting of F: drive ever complete?

Q3. If completed will my machine be fixed, that is will my machine be free from 100% disk utilization?

Q4. Will my hard disk be safe to use in future for no data loss...

Q5. Should I buy new hard disk?

Q6. Does hard formatting fix bad sectors at all?

Q7. Should I do the same for C: drive too? While installing Windows I did quick format, not hard format.

Sorry for so many questions...but I have wasted many weeks on this. And no thread online is of help to me.

Mahesha999
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    Check your hard drives for SMART errors [How can I read my hard drive's SMART status in Windows 7?](//superuser.com/q/29240), and [What is the easiest method of checking SMART status for your hard drive?](//superuser.com/q/14803). Report back with the results. – DavidPostill May 27 '17 at 20:55
  • Did you try chkdsk? https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/guide-to-using-check-disk-in-windows-vista/ – Tesseract May 27 '17 at 21:00
  • yess wasnt of much help – Mahesha999 May 27 '17 at 21:00
  • should I leave this formatting of `F:` for some more hours? – Mahesha999 May 27 '17 at 21:01
  • It's not *"hard"* format, but full format. – sawdust May 27 '17 at 22:03
  • HDDs are slow, replace it with SSD this solves your issue – magicandre1981 May 28 '17 at 06:31
  • @DavidPostill [here](https://s9.postimg.org/dv70r9ndr/HD_Tune_Pro.png) are screenshots of HDTune on my machine. It seems that there are some "damaged" and "unstable" sectors. It says that airlflow temprature is high and recommends replacement. However its well known that old XPS laptops used to run hot. (See comments in this [thread](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/148731/how-to-reduce-temperature-on-a-dell-xps-l502x).) My laptop survived usage at 80+ degree Celsius very well...Also running Benchmarks on HDTune gave read error and ended up in BSOD after a minute. What can I conclude? – Mahesha999 May 28 '17 at 07:05
  • @Mahesha999 Backup up and replace your disk immediately. It could fail at any moment. – DavidPostill May 28 '17 at 07:54
  • What made you think like that? Is it unstable sector ? or bad sector ? or BSOD ? I am planning to buy SSD. But want to know if this HDD is even safer for anything? I mean I thought I should remove my dead DVD ROM and put this HDD with caddy. Should I abandon this HDD completely? Or its ok to use with caddy? Also if I use it with caddy, will it damage my new SSD or slow down my machine again? – Mahesha999 May 28 '17 at 08:13
  • @DavidPostill I didnt found anything detailed about "unstable" sectors online. So just wanted to know what out of bad sector, unstable sectors and BSOD sounds more disturbing. Also want to know if its safe to use this hdd with caddy... – Mahesha999 May 28 '17 at 10:18
  • This is how [HD Tune Pro Error Scan](https://s21.postimg.org/4sdhgj00n/hdtune_scren.png) looked like. PC crashed after this and restarted. – Mahesha999 May 28 '17 at 13:08
  • in your case the HDD is damaged. buy a new HDD – magicandre1981 May 28 '17 at 19:27

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It sounds like there is an issue with your Windows installation. Try using the Windows restore built into Windows to reset the system without having to reformat the drive and reinstall Windows. You will have to install any programs that you installed but everything else should be fine. Running chkdsk has an option to scan for bad sectors and that might help but that is a slow and painful process. If your drive is acting the same after the reset, you have a hardware issue. You can unplug the bad drive temporarily, and reinstall Windows on your second drive to see if that works properly.

To answer your questions:

  1. You can't conclude the drive is bad without running some diagnostic tools on it. Try the trial version of HDSentinel, that will give you the drive SMART info and the life of the drive.

  2. There is now way to know that. Try a different tool, for example Hiren's Boot CD had a lot of tools to do low level disk operations.

3, 4, 5. Reset the system with the method I described or reinstall Windows. If the same thing occurs, the disk is most likely bad. You can use chkdsk with the bad sector parameter and that will mark the bed sectors but that's only a tempest solution.

6, 7. Quick or hard format does not fix bed sectors at all. Buy a new disk, SSDs are cheap.

Ben Richards
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