virtualbox.org

Last term I took a class that required 3 VM's to be running at the same time, two DC's and a client. They ran fine, this term even booting up one brings my disk usage to 100% and keeps it there for a long time. Performing actions seems to affect it as well, but when it sits it does nothing. The system bogs down and is a mess when it is at 100%. The only change is that I'm running Windows 8.1 Professional vs Windows 8.1 Home.

It is a clean install with no viruses or malware. Virtualbox seems to be the factor. Hard drive tests fine with chkdsk -r, sfc /scannow. I did go out and purchase a SSD and it works great with the cloned image but I am simply trying to determine if it is the hard drive or a compatibility issue. Do you know if a hard drive can have faults that just don't show up on the checks I've mentioned? Or has anyone else had issues such as the one I'm having?

VirtualBox itself doesn't use any disk I/O past the disk creation stages. However if the guest OS is doing a lot of disk I/O then naturally this is passed to the host. I suggest that you find out what the guest is doing. Only hard data will really answer your question.