Area-51m R1, disk usage keeps going to 100%, #3

Question

Hello,

I had purchased a Alienware Area-51m laptop for streaming and am running into this exact same issue. I have been on the phone with tech support a couple of times now and they haven't been able to help me.

Why is my disk usage constantly fluctuating up to 100% and rarely sits below 10%?

I thought that purchasing this expensive laptop would be awesome and have had nothing but issues, can't use video editing software. I just did a recovery and reset the system thinking maybe that would help and upon finishing the recovery and restarting the system the disk usage still shoots up to 100% when I am doing pretty much nothing on the computer.

I would really like this resolved as I have only owned this laptop for about 3 months. Did not expect to have this many problems.

A51-06 · Answer

Hi There @stomik,

Do you Have the HardDrive Set as your Boot Drive?

If so it’s not even an issue with your computer Hardware, it’s just how Hard Drives Work.

Heres an explanation:

A HardDrive is a spinning platter rotating at a speed of either 5400RPM or 7200RPM or higher. Higher speeds mean better performance, slower speeds mean slower performance. Since a HardDrive is a spinning platter instead of a SSD which uses electricity to read and write data it’s always spinning meaning it’s always at 100% usage because it constantly has to read data or else it can’t read the data.

You can kind of fix the issue by disabling SuperFetch which uses all your disk to help load apps faster.

stomik · Answer

I have already disabled superfetch and have done a bunch of other fixes as well that I have found online with no avail.

It's just ridiculous that Dell would sell this M51 laptop with a hybrid hard drive and then when I contact them and tell them that this computer has been thee worst purchase ever because it is constantly running slow with high disk usage they tell me that its because it has a mechanical drive and I need to buy a solid state drive.

But my question is WHY ARE YOU SELLING THE LAPTOP WITH A HARD DRIVE IN THE FIRST PLACE!

I bought this laptop for my wife as a present and its been the most frustrating piece of technology shes ever owned.

So sad....

A51-06 · Answer

It’s because of the HDD that the system is bad. You need to get a 500Gb NVMe SSD that is Gen 4 because of the faster speeds.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BN4NJ2J?tag=duckduckgo-ipad-20&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1

Set the NVMe as the boot drive and the HDD as secondary storage for games, photos, documents, etc...

stomik · Answer

I have litterally had the same issue and bought the laptop in March - https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware/Area-51m-R1-disk-usage-keeps-going-to-100-3/m-p/7643577#M30844

That was my post from about a month ago. Dell support hasn't been able to help me and in our private messages told me the issue is that I have a mechanical hard drive and that I need a solid state one. BUT THEY SOLD ME THE LAPTOP WITH THE MECHANICAL HARD DRIVE!

Why would you sell a laptop with a hard drive that will fluctuate to 100% disk usage. Its as if the hard drive wasn't built for this laptop. So its somehow my fault apparently and now I need to go purchase another hard drive so that this laptop can function normally.

I feel ya dude. I also did a reboot and tried a bunch of other fixes online and nothing worked. All this experience has made me understand is to never purchase dell products apparently. I mean if they would at least do something more about it or tell me hey we appreciate you as a customer why don't you send it back and we will replace the har drive with a solid state one. That would be great but no. They don't care. Have had nothing but issues with this purchase. It was supposed to be a present for my wife too she is so upset about it.

EastCoastNik · Answer

Agreed with you 100%. Why are we paying 4x the cost for a laptop that runs 4x slower than a base model. I use mine at home and in the office and it is easily the least reliable machine we have and we have some really Acers kicking around. It is great that it has a killer graphics card but it is like putting a jet engine into a Ford Pinto. I spend more time waiting for things to load than actually doing them.

It is extremely frustrating and I did not anticipate having to spend $5,000 in time constantly working around issues.

A51-06 · Answer

i have 2 questions for you.

how much ram do you have on your computer.

use msconfig and find out how many startup programs are on there.

can you also take a pic of what the task manager looks like?

my friend justin has a Area 51m with an RTX 2080 and i9 with 64Gb of RAM and a NVMe drive for the boot and the usage is at 0-10% since its not a mechanical HDD. and he uses the hdd as the storage.

krupps · Answer

How is that an answer? The OS is not going to peg a drive at 100% for 20 minutes.

True getting a second drive may help but very doubtful.

The point being is that it's pegged with no apps running, which makes no sense. Other than Alienware has become a POS since Dell took over them.

With less than 18% of ram being utilized, it makes no sense that a drive is at 100% for 20 minutes.

The best way to solve this is throw the lap top in the trash and build your own MiniITX and never look back. I have a 10 year mac book that performs better. 1 year after own the laptop it's performance is junk. If I delete all of the alienware add ons it performs slightly better.

It's a waste of time to depend on Alienware performance in the last 3 months. Whatever they're installing is destroying the laptop performance.

crimsom · Answer

Hi @stomik the Area-51m R1 Storage has provision for One very slow up to 6 Gbps SATA Hard Disk Drive and Two/Four fast/ultrafast up to 32 Gbps M.2 2230/2280 PCIe Gen3 x4 NVME Solid-State Drives. (M.2 PCIe Gen4 card will be demoted to run at PCIe Gen3 speed.)

The NVMe card should always be the OS(C:) boot drive. Crucial System Advisor Tool says Area-51m R1 will accept 2TB NVMe card in each slot. Installing an ultrafast 1TB or 2TB NVMe card as the OS(C:) boot drive is the best read/write speed option. (There is no performance benefit in having a two drive RAID 0 configuration, this has low reliability, if one drive becomes unserviceable, both drives must be replaced.)

If the slow SATA is the OS(C:) boot drive, use Macrium Reflect Free's clone option to create NVMe OS(C:) boot drive.

To check health of all storage drives, use CrystalDiskInfo x64.

Please click on Kudos to say thank you for response from user that is not employed by Dell. Please share an update on progress, so that other users derive benefit from your experience. Thank you.

krupps · Answer

Completely disabling Kill Center and Alien Command Center restored my laptop disk usage to under 15% once again.

I did a full check disk and defrag and everything was fine.

Seems like every three months Dell puts out an update that brings my alienware laptop to a crawl. Can't wait to get all my parts for my MiniITX Level 20. Then I can throw this laptop in the trash.

Alienware

Area-51m R1, disk usage keeps going to 100%, #3

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