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On my Windows 7 computer, this happens:

  • I work for several hours without problems, also using Chrome
  • Suddenly, just after refreshing a page in Chrome, disk starts being used excessively
  • (here I can close Chrome or not, no matter, the disk won't stop)
  • Disk activity LED is on all the time and I hear it running like crazy, the whole computer is a little slowed down
  • It last 5-10 minutes
  • In the meantime, if I go to Windows Task Manager and observe what processes are using disk, and turn them off one by one - but no success in stopping the excessive disk usage
  • After approximately 10 minutes everything stops
  • I go to Chrome (or re-open it) and refresh the page with mixed results - sometimes the whole process repeats immediately, sometimes not

Basically, it is almost always Chrome refreshing random page that starts the excessive disk usage, but killing Chrome process does not stop the disk.

Going to the same page in Firefox is not causing problems.

Windows Search is turned off.

I would like to know what is really happening. Perhaps there is a utility which would allow me to see which process is really using the disk, so that I can disable the service ? (not chrome, because killing chrome does not change anything) or even better, perhaps there is a way to fix it?

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  • 1
    Sorry I don't have a solution to this one - I am hitting it myself where a Chrome process seems to suddenly get very resource hungry, and I am still running XP on an older machine. Process Explorer tool in the SysInternals Suite from Mark Russinovich (now owned by Microsoft) is great for showing detailed info about running processes.
    – Bork Blatt
    Mar 21, 2012 at 10:39

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Open resource monitor, and go to the disk tab. The top pane will tell you what processes have disk activity, and the lower pane will tell you with more detail what the are viewing/writing etc.

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  • Resource monitor is ok, good to know something like this is in Windows. To solve the issue, I just disabled (almost) all addons in chrome and the problem disappeared completely.
    – camcam
    Mar 22, 2012 at 13:55
  • where can I find that resource monitor in windows xp sp3.
    – Debabratta Jena
    Jul 12, 2012 at 2:40
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    @Debabratta, it does not exist.
    – soandos
    Jul 12, 2012 at 2:40
  • any other tool which can tell me about disk activity.
    – Debabratta Jena
    Jul 12, 2012 at 2:46
  • @Debabratta technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896646.aspx
    – soandos
    Jul 12, 2012 at 2:50
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I'm still running Windows 7 and Google Chrome causes a lot of spurious disk activity. The disk is burbling away even when I haven't touched the machine for an hour. When a page loads, it may take forever and freeze the mouse so that it is no longer possible to interact with the computer.

Google really sucks, just like it is the destiny of every American company to eventually suck. But I hope they don't go out of business because their presence has made my property more valuable.

Why am I still running Windows 7? Because an upgrade to Windows 10 in 2015 caused the machine to take over 1 hour to start. Because it slowed everything down to a crawl similarly to what I described earlier. Because after I reinstalled Windows 7, Windows 10 sneakily tried to install itself against my wishes, more than once. Microsoft, the corporation, should be prosecuted for terrorism and handed the death sentence.

I have had no problems since I switched to Firefox a month ago. Be sure to also delete all shortcuts to Google Chrome so that you don't accidentally invoke this devilish atrocity.

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I know this post is old but it's still very much valid. Check out these bugs:

https://crbug.com/52663

https://crbug.com/176727

Still remains unfixed to this day and they are still breaking SSDs left and right. My recommendation is to post to those bugs. They will most likely ignore your posts but that is the only way to go to fix the excessive disk usage.

A workaround is to use a ram drive but that have its drawbacks. If your computer crash you lose everything on the ram drive. If your computer decides to reboot for instance after an update you'll also lose everything on the ram drive.

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