high CPU usage!

hi guys...i have a simple question...

i'm loosing hard disk memory....does it affect my cpu usage?
because every time i look at my cpu meter, it's above 50...

thanks for the response.

Are you saying you're losing hard drive space?

If your CPU activity is about 50% most of the time then something is reading / writing in the background.

Check the Task Manager and see what's running in the background to chew up so much CPU usage.

Probably not. It takes little CPU horsepower to read or write to the disk. But what ever is consuming your CPU resources may also be eating up disk space.

Have you scanned for malware?

There is a hard drive which I suppose some may call a hard disk and then there is Random Access Memory (RAM). If your hard drive fills up it can affect processing but you will get a warning of low disk space. You need RAM for programs to run. For 32 bit W7 2GB is recommended, 1GB is the minimum and 4GB is the maximum (of which only about 3.25GB can actually be used). For 64 bit W7 3GB is recommended and the max is generally limited by your motherboard.

Your CPU processes the command instructions of the programs which are in memory (RAM). If the RAM fills up, portions of memory may be swapped out to the page file on the harddrive. If there is excessive swapping in and out between the RAM and the pagefile such that it effects processing time, this is called Thrashing. Now with W7 (and Vista) the system is supposed to utilize free CPU and memory to do things such as search indexing, etc so it may appear as though your CPU is overworked while in fact it is just the OS utilizing available resources.

If you have less than 4 GB of RAM and you can afford it then it isn't a bad idea to buy some more. If your HD has less than 40GB free, I personally would buy an extra HD. If you post back with whether you mean CPU, RAM, or harddrive and what utility you are using to determine it's maxed-out status we might be able to offer further advice/recommendations.

Great explanation TrainableMan. One minor point however. The page file is used whether the RAM is filled up or not. The OS uses the page file for data it thinks may be needed, or needed again soon. You can have 24Gb of RAM and the page file will still be used. But certainly it is used much more frequently if there is only a small supply of RAM and that is reflected by lots of disk activity.

BUT - the OP's concern was losing disk space and heavy use of CPU resources. As I noted before, reading and writing to the disk takes very little CPU horsepower and the page file, even if managed by Windows and not fixed will not continue to eat up more and more disk space. So something else is happening here. Some other program is, or programs are causing the CPU to work. And perhaps those programs are creating logs or temporary files in the process. In any case, as the 3 of us have noted, we need more information.