Visual Studio 100% disk usage

38
votes

I have VS 2013 and Microsoft Windows 8.1 The issue appeared at the ending of last week. Without any updating or important changing, when I do somethings in VS, disk usage reaches 100%. For example, when I click on "Check In" button in the "Team Explorer" window, disk usage raises up to 100%. Sometimes by a simple right-click in text editor this problems happens. I googled about 100% disk usage problem but there are some things about this problem on windows 8.1 but on my computer, all applications are running without any problem, just VS2013 has a "full disk usage" problem.

Some information about my system:

OS Name: Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro

OS Version: 6.3.9600 N/A Build 9600

System Type: x64-based PC

Processor(s): 1 Processor(s) Installed. Intel64 Family 6 Model 60 Stepping 3GenuineIntel ~3500 Mhz

Total Physical Memory: 8,131 MB

Available Physical Memory: 3,836 MB

Virtual Memory: Max Size: 10,947 MB

Virtual Memory: Available: 5,275 MB

Virtual Memory: In Use: 5,672 MB

Page File Location(s): C:\pagefile.sys

7
windowsvisual-studiovisual-studio-2013windows-8disk
Did you manage to fix that @Merta? I'm having the same issue. – Bruno Pessanha
same problem here, with same OS, VS 2013 c++ community. I was developing an app and my laptop finally broke down because of disk usage at 100% all the time. Now i'm using a new laptop with the same setup and i'm beginning to experience the same disk usage. – user311174
I have been having this issue for a few years now, with other version of VS. Only thing I can see is that it is related to a very old legacy Web Site Application (not a Web Application, a Web Site with code) – link64
I didn't find any way to solve the problem, But after some days, the problem resolved automatically!! – Merta
Same issue here in 2019 with VS2017 and Win10. Going to try defragging my HDD tonight and see if that helps or not... – Chad

7 Answers

1
votes

(Comment for others landing here as @Marta explains that the problem no longer persists on their machine.)

In general, any performance issue in Visual Studio should be reported to Microsoft. It's easy to do this directly from VS using the Report a Problem tool. That feature will automatically attach logs/traces which are shared privately with Microsoft. Internally, tooling will analyse those attachments to assign a ticket to the relevant team. With such attachments, there is a high likelihood that the problem can be diagnosed and fixed in a future release of Visual Studio.

Instructions on the Report a Problem tool:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/how-to-report-a-problem-with-visual-studio?view=vs-2019

If you prefer to diagnose high disk IO yourself, FileMon can be a useful tool:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/filemon

0
votes

It could be related to Visual Studio updates - which would show under C:\ProgramData\Package Cache.

A disk space management tool like TreeSize Pro will help figure it out though ... it will show which directory is using the most space. You can then target what aspect of Visual Studio is eating up your drive space.

There is a free trial at https://www.jam-software.com/treesize/

You can also use this tool to export and post a screenshot / export of the usage here and it may help identify what is going on.

0
votes

I had a similar issue that turned out to be the built-in git provider having issues with large codebases containing a moderate-to-large amount of changes before a commit.

Changing to a third-party one fixed the issue.

0
votes

The operating system manages the resources (CPU cores, disk drives, GPU) to deliver what you have asked of it.

Ideally (what the OS designers are hoping for), when you perform an action, all the resources spin up into action and due to a well balanced system, they all go to 100% utilization, for a brief length of time, then go back to idle.

This form of utilization is, in practice impossible to achieve, as the PC builders would have to know what your system is going to be used for.

When the task manager describes the CPU as 100% utilized, it means that all the cores on the box, are busy running code, and are the bottleneck.

When the task manager describes the disk as 100% utilized, it (as far as I can tell), means that there is always a queue of items to be read, or written to/from the disk. Even with 100% utilization, it may be that the metric is the only reason you are concerned, and the system is otherwise responsive.

In either of these cases, it shows that for a given workload, the CPU or the disk drive has become the rate determining step.

In practice, it should not matter, unless the length of time the system is at 100% is longer than a few minutes, or that your machine feels otherwise sluggish.

Further diagnosis can be performed by using the tool Sys internals : procmon, or the Microsoft : ADK

I would look using the procmon, at what files are being accessed during the 100%disk usage period, and decide whether

  1. The behavior is sensible (if not raise a bug with Microsoft)
  2. The machine is working usably (if not consider a hybrid or ssd disk)
0
votes

I've had some exasperating problems with disk usage and source control explorer.

What fixed the issue for me was making sure that I never opened Source Control Explorer in more than one project at a time, keep it closed when I could and limit the amount of VS instances you have open.

-1
votes

An SSD may can solve this... Are you sure this is caused by visual studio? when I was using Windows 8.1, the Windows Defender get to 100% disk usage from time to time. If you're sure it occurs when you use Visual Studio, you can try to repair it using the installer. Hope these would help you.

-4
votes

Try moving the source code to SSD drive.

HDDs have much slower disk I/O performance compared to SSD drives. Generally in windows C drive comes as SSD drive.