High disk usage crippling performance (XPS 15 9550)

I'm having issues with the 99%-100% disk usage making my 1TB HDD + 32GB SSD Cache system unusable, and I can't seem to be able to solve this problem. So I'm turning to you in my time of need
I have experienced the same issue 2 months ago, and tried all of the options I found on the net (disabling prefetch/superfetch, disabling BTIS, setting custom pagefile size, disabling some other options in Windows like search, Defender...). And none helped. I ended up reinstalling Windows which obviously helped.
And it has worked perfectly until couple of days ago. From what I can tell, nothing changed. The only option is that some Windows update installed. All of a sudden, when using the computer, the disk gets thrashed by "System and compressed memory". The write rate for the process is usually under 1MB while Disk Usage is 99% or 100%. Computer lags completely and becomes unusable until disk usage lowers (10-45sec). It is exacerbated by any task that reads/writes from the disk - even simple folder opening sometimes makes my system hang.
I tried updating/reverting couple of drivers thinking maybe it's a driver corruption issue. I changed Intel RST, Nvidia, Wifi and Audio drivers and nothing changed. I also changed antiviruses thinking maybe it has something to do with how they access files.
So I restored Windows to a previous point in time and it worked for a while. The weird thing is - once I restored I blocked Windows from automatically installing updates, and it worked perfectly for 3-4 days (even when doing disk intensive tasks like working in Premiere Pro). But then again two days ago disk usage starts messing everything up without anything changing - all the drivers, programs and windows updates are the same like when it was working perfectly. I have absolutely no idea what to do anymore. I was hoping some of you have encountered something similar, or know a better way of tackling this.
Thanks

 

Hi there.

I'm not sure what is causing the disk to thrash like that with regard to the software - but have you performed a test on the physical drive itself? I had the same setup as you and swapped out the drive as fast as possible as the mechanical HDD in this configuration is a major bottleneck IMHO.

If there was a problem with the drive itself or the cache drive it could possibly be causing this - maybe run the Dell Diagnostics (F12 on boot - choose Diagnostics) then on the drive to see if there's anything wrong or open it in Windows and use tools/check the drive for errors.

If I were you I'd replace that drive/cache setup anyway as the machine will really benefit from the upgrade to either a standard SSD in the 2.5" bay or a Sata OR NVMe drive (faster but more expensive) in the M.2 slot. Its an easy upgrade and will be a mahoosive performance upgrade.The 1TB thats in there is probably the same one I had, a 5400rpm Western Digital Blue.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help

 

Perhaps it's an issue with disk caching? Maybe try installing the newest intel RST drivers from the intel website?

 

I did some research, and some people have listed that your symptoms are related to two possible areas:
1) Related to Microsoft OneDrive. Disabling that may help?
2) Related to the Windows swapfile. Disabling that may help?

There didn't seem to be a single answer on eliminating this problem completely. Most of what I saw was people just trying different things left-and-right. Some of that would yield results, but most of those tests didn't help the situation.

The way I see it, there are two possible things you can do. Option 1 is to continue troubleshooting using the suggestions I dug up above. Perhaps just even let your computer sit there idle, while it completes whatever background task it's trying to do that thrashes your hard drive so much. Option 2 is to just buy an SSD, and ditch the mechanical HDD you currently have in your system. On top of the typical benefits of an SSD ( tremendous speed / performance increase, no noise, lower heat, lower power draw, data protection from drops, etc), an SSD would completely eliminate the symptoms you're experiencing now. The "System and Compressed Memory" background process would still happen. But an SSD will be so fast, and efficient at handling multiple simultaneous I/O requests, that you won't notice any slowdown whatsoever while it's happening.

 

Good call, and stick the 1TB in an external USB 3.0 caddy and use it for backups/system image/data - if its mechanically ok.

 

First of all, thank you all for taking the time to reply and look into it. I really do appreciate it
Unfortunately buying an SSD is not now an option, for at least a month or so. (although it is a long planned upgrade) That's why I struggle with resolving this stupid issue.

Actually, when it works properly - it's not THAT bad. Compared to my desktop with SSD, it is slow, but after half an hour of working on hdd+cache you get used to it (especially when coding). But these intermittent freezes take me back to Win ME times (anyone remembers that Microsofts' brilliant concoction?).
Concerning the drive health, all the tests I know show it as in perfect health.

So far, my best guess is that there is something terribly wrong going on between Win10 and Intel RST RAID option. I tried with latest drivers from Dell, Intel and the drivers I got with notebook. All the same...

The number of people having this issue is huge, and the number of "solutions" is almost as huge. That's why I asked here if someone had this issue on this machine. It would help to eliminate a lot of variables.
1) OneDrive has been disabled since I installed Win
2) I haven't tried disabling the swap file. People had mixed results with it, more miss than hit, so I kind of evaded that option. I use a lot of VMs and my RAM does get clogged up, so swap file is fairly useful for me. But if nothing else pops up here, I'll try that as a last resort.
And just letting it idle while it grinds its way out is my current way of dealing with situation. But I'm getting close to thrashing the notebook to pieces . "Rendering 4K video - No problem master, Opening a folder in front of a client - Think again mister, I'm taking a short nap".

I usually like tinkering with things and solving problems, but this system has been driving me mad since the day I got it. Win10 and drivers have been a total clusterf***.
I've seen some guy posted a thread where he noticed his cpu throttles when gaming on battery. Decided to try it, CPU gets throttled just like in his case. Great...

Strangely, I still love this notebook

 

I think you hit the nail on the head with your comment on Windows 10 and its drivers - its been released far too early IMO and simply isn't stable enough to be used as a mainstream operating system. Another thing that doesn't help is this model of machine is a lot of new tech and very touchy with regard to drivers & configuration.

And oh yes I do remember Millenium Edition,and its regular BSOD's! M$ seem to go through good and bad OS's in some odd sequence and this is another bad one unfortunately. I was happy to use 2000 - XP - Win7 - all worked well and even Vista was reasonable in the end but this new incarnation is a crock of <insert bad word here>.

How about imaging yours as is, back it up and do a Windows 7 SP1 install and give that a try?

 

You should try the latest drivers from intel. Dell's drivers have had issues with performance on SSDs, it's not a far fetched idea that they will have issues with caching too

 

I have, tried two different versions of Intel drivers.

 

Aha! That's your problem.

Everyone knows that things have an 80% higher failure rate when doing live demonstrations in front of clients. Stop using your computer around clients so much, and I bet the problem will go away.




Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

 

Exactly, moments like these make me ascribe consciousness to inanimate objects like notebooks. Makes me think my notebook is getting back at me for all the things it has seen

On a more somber note, my notebook is still having zest and fervor of an asthmatic 95 year old in front of a flight of stairs....

 

I have exactly the sae symptoms and it drives me nut, alo the HDD in the new XPS is so damn loud. Int he previous system it was fine. idid something today that helped a bit. I followed some instruction and went to the Windows services and dibled Sindows search and superfetch it. it still goes to 99% but for a while and comes down evcen to 10% never seen it go to 0 try it and let me know

 

SOLUTION

Disable the Virtual Memory !

It has 16G or RAM, and on my kids two devices it had "automatically managed" a 2G page file.

Disabling virtual memory brought hard disk usage down from a continuous steady 100% to less than 5% consistently withing a few minutes of switch-on. Yes sure things like DropBox and Malware bytes waking up mean the activity is 100% when it boots (ie the disk speed is limiting the whole system), but once these have their respective heads straight, their usage drops off.to a few percent.

Seems like otherwise Windows is contantly trying to maximise the RAM available (16G to start with), by swapping stuff out to the 2G pagefile :-\ Smooth !

Honestly, it's like a magic bulltet !

There's someone else's description here showing how to turn off the page file (you have to ignore one or two warnings as you `set` the changes.

http://www.trishtech.com/2014/11/disable-virtual-memory-in-windows-10/

Once you've done that, and realise it works, go undo all the other stuff you turned off like Superfetch and Windows Serarch services so your PC is back to normal.

Enjoy.

Max H

 

I've also had responsiveness issues when opening folders. Got better when I found advice to open folder properties, Customize tab, set Optimize this folder for: Documents
Presumably otherwise it may start rendering previews upon opening, which may take time.