getting slower in VirtualBox, disk is very busy

I'm running Windows 8.1 (upgraded from Windows 7 SP1) in VirtualBox on Ubuntu 14.04. This setup has been satisfactory for many months. In recent weeks the Windows boot has the hard disk running continually for about 5 minutes. This is far longer than usual. Even activities such as web browsing from Firefox in Windows in VirtualBox seems to require a lot of disk activity. When VirtualBox is running, Ubuntu is now far slower than usual. Anytime VirtualBox and Windows are up there seems to be a...

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