Is Chrome possibly causing excessive disk usage?
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?
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.
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.