I'm using Windows 8.1 on my Thinkpad W530 coz that's what it came with when I bought it used.
Couple days ago, Firefox had gobbled up most of the available RAM so I killed it. I knew that the SSD would get busy for a minute or two after that coz that's what usually happens. Memory got freed and it was showing something like 45% used out of 32 GB (I have Chrome running too). But this time, the SSD activity did not stop. So I look at the response time and it's constantly half a second almost which is pretty high for an SSD (WD Green 240GB). Disk activity is above 90% and it is just writing almost 2 megabytes per second constantly without stopping. I decide to let it do its thing and go out for groceries. I return an hour later and it's still at it with no end in sight!
Time for some google. Someone says to stop Superfetch. So I disable Superfetch in the Services list. Nothing changes. I expand the Service Host process and see a few system processes under it, with Windows Update being at the very top. So I go and disable Windows Update and stop its service. It takes a minute or two but the disk activity finally goes to zero. I start up Firefox and wait for the disk activity to settle down again. And moments later, it's above 90% again! Check the Windows Update service and it's activated again! Stop it and disable it with extreme prejudice. Disk goes back to normal activity and it's been that way since.
I saw some search results that people with Windows 10 were also having this issue. Not sure what it is where Windows Update needs to constantly write without doing any reading. Could be some sort of a bug. Hope this helps anyone else facing this issue.
Couple days ago, Firefox had gobbled up most of the available RAM so I killed it. I knew that the SSD would get busy for a minute or two after that coz that's what usually happens. Memory got freed and it was showing something like 45% used out of 32 GB (I have Chrome running too). But this time, the SSD activity did not stop. So I look at the response time and it's constantly half a second almost which is pretty high for an SSD (WD Green 240GB). Disk activity is above 90% and it is just writing almost 2 megabytes per second constantly without stopping. I decide to let it do its thing and go out for groceries. I return an hour later and it's still at it with no end in sight!
Time for some google. Someone says to stop Superfetch. So I disable Superfetch in the Services list. Nothing changes. I expand the Service Host process and see a few system processes under it, with Windows Update being at the very top. So I go and disable Windows Update and stop its service. It takes a minute or two but the disk activity finally goes to zero. I start up Firefox and wait for the disk activity to settle down again. And moments later, it's above 90% again! Check the Windows Update service and it's activated again! Stop it and disable it with extreme prejudice. Disk goes back to normal activity and it's been that way since.
I saw some search results that people with Windows 10 were also having this issue. Not sure what it is where Windows Update needs to constantly write without doing any reading. Could be some sort of a bug. Hope this helps anyone else facing this issue.
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