HELP!

[BobH]

Sorry for shouting but I think my laptop is about to crater. The hard drive shows 100% usage in Task Manager > Performance; yet there was nothing other than a Malwarebytes scan running actively. Background processes appeared to be using minimal resources. The Malwarebytes scan ended after about 25 minutes and detected no malware. The disk performance indicator is no longer a solid 100% utilization but seems to run OK then spike to full utilization. My guess is that the disk drive is failing.

I need to make a full image backup that I can restore (I think). I have an external 3TB HDD connected via USB; however, File Explorer does not show it as a disk device. I don't know why. When I look at USB in Device Manager I see nothing that I can identify as the HDD.

If I'm to make a backup to the external USB-attached HDD, I have to be able to address it. Can anyone suggest anything I can do to make this external HDD a part of my system? My old brain has lost its edge I'm afraid.

UPDATE:
Further noodling around shows Memory to be a problem as well, consistently running at 75-80% utilization with Firefox seeming to be the biggest user. There were multiple Firefox processes. Killing several of them lowered memory utilization; however, I'm beginning to suspect and undetected rootkit.

[stuck]

Have you tried shutting the machine down, i.e. completely powered off, and then restarting?

Ken

[BobH]

Yes. It reduces disk utilization for awhile but it slowly rises. It has no appreciable effect on memory usage.

[JoeP]

If Task Manager shows 100% disk utilization, there should be a process that is the culprit. Look at the processes tab. 75% - 80% memory utilization seems fairly high. How much RAM is on the system? If your memory usage spikes that will cause more disk activity as the system utilizes the swap file.

[BobH]

It seems that Firefox is gobbling a lot of memory. I don't know why. I'm not using it any differently than usual.

Task Manager.PNG

Here are screenshots from Speccy and Disk Management.

Speccy.PNG

Disk partitions.PNG

All of this started very rapidly this morning with the initial system being minutes-long responses to loading apps.
Disk performance still seems to be occasionally very high, perhaps consistent with memory paging which Firefox might be causing. I have no idea why unless there is malware involved. I'm still looking for a rootkit detection and removal tool.

[DocAElstein]

Hi Bob
Firefox has/ or had some problems that eats up C space until the computer dies. Some years ago it killed a windows 7 machine of mine.
Since then I figured out how to get Firefox itself to clean itself out. I still use this method occasionally, and sometimes it clears away more than CClean BleachBit and co.
https://www.eileenslounge.com/viewtopic ... 47#p305247

Alan

[HansV]

Unless Firefox's memory use keeps on increasing, I wouldn't worry about it. Modern versions of Windows keep lots of processes in memory, so memory usage tends to be high all the time.

If you click on the header of the Disk column, you should be able to see which processes cause 99% disk usage.

[JoeP]

After you click on a heading in Task Manager, hold the CTRL key down to keep TM from updating the display. That will make the processes easier to identify as they won't jump around on the screen each time TM updates.

[PaulB]

Thanks, Joe. That's a tip I hadn't heard of before and resolves an annoying issue.

[BobH]

Thanks Joe.