Copy files causes 100% CPU usage

J

Jackie Chan

New Member
Hi,
I have a strange issue...
I have a new computer and I was copying some files from an external HDD to an internal one (not the one on which is Windows 11).
I noticed that the copy process causes CPU clock to go to maximum and the Task Manager Performance tab shows that CPU is at 100% utilization. Simultaneously the Details tab shows 99% System Idle Process.
WHY?!?
 
Last edited:
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
What exact cpu does it have? The specs of the system will determine the performance when doing tasks.
 
beers

beers

Moderator
Staff member
Did you build it yourself or is it a prebuilt?

A long time ago this was common when a device negotiated into PIO mode instead of DMA as the transfer task would excessively interrupt the CPU, but I haven't seen one of those in a long time.

Do you have the appropriate chipset and storage drivers installed for your system?
 
J

Jackie Chan

New Member
MB:

MSI PRO Z690-A WIFI, Z690, LGA1700, DDR5, PCI-E 5.0 (DP, HDMI)(CF), 6x SATA 6Gb/s, 4x M.2, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type C, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ATX​


CPU:

Intel Core i5-12600KF​


RAM:

32GB (2x 16GB), DDR5, 5600MHz, Corsair VENGEANCE​


I did not build it myself. I picked the parts myself, ordered it built by a PC company.
Not sure what PIO mode and DMA are...
How should I test this further?

PS: I just did a test copy from the SSD to the 3.5" internal storage HDD. The speed in windows was displayed at 2GB/s!!! Obviously the HDD cant do that. After that I re-muxed a movie from the SSD to the HDD and was watching the Task Manager and noticed that HDD write is around 150 MB/s however the muxing program displayed the process as complete in just a few seconds but the HDD activity and CPU load at 100% continued for a few seconds longer. It was like its using some system where it allows me to continue work as if the copying is done without it actually being finished. Weird....
 
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Okedokey

Okedokey

Well-Known Member
Remuxing is simply adding the containers that change the format, so there is no encoding, but it is far from a standard copy and paste unless you have lots of very small files you're copy and pasting. Due to the low q-depth of the action on HDD, you're probably seeing it cache to RAM (thus the high CPU usage) with background writes to disk. Look at PrimoCache for some better options at making this more efficient.
 
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