Extremely high disk activity without any real usage
I had the same issue. I resolved it by changing the power plan from 'Balanced' to 'High performance'. Instant results.
Running the following command appears to have fixed the problem:
chkdsk /b /f /v /scan c:
Explanation
In the chkdsk
version included with Windows 10 these flags mean:
/b
NTFS only: Re-evaluates bad clusters on the volume (implies /R)
/f
Fixes errors on the disk.
/v
On FAT/FAT32: Displays the full path and name of every file on the disk.
/scan
NTFS only: Runs an online scan on the volume
/r
Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information (implies /F, when /scan not specified).
Thanks to @hennes for the inspiration.
Another reason for extremely HDD usage is MS Windows Defender. There is some antimalware service under Windows 8 that belongs to Windows Defender.