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Author Topic: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?  (Read 13913 times)

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Geek-9pm

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What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« on: December 21, 2016, 11:29:17 PM »
I am using Windows XP mat the moment.
Recently I have noticed my hard drive activity light flashes about once a second. I r, I was not able to see what program is doing it.
At the moment I am not using wireless, so wireless activity should not be the issue.

Here is a article I found, but it is not very clear what to do.
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/find-out-what-program-is-secretly-accessing-your-hard-disk-drive/

I tried two of the programs they name and could not understand anything.  :'(

DaveLembke



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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #1 on: December 22, 2016, 06:13:52 AM »
I have seen the Indexing Service do this on XP. If you shut off indexing you might see it go away. However the drawback to this is that when using the file management system it has to rediscover all the time vs having an index cached of where everything is. I have disabled indexing before but saw no real benefit to doing so, so I leave it running.

https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/snap_idx_srv_mgmt.mspx?mfr=true

http://lifehacker.com/031440/turn-off-indexing-and-speed-up-windows-xp

Other possible cause is if your running XP with a small amount of RAM and its frequently paging. How much RAM does this system have?

Additionally any antivirus with a background checker could be lightly hitting the drive walking around on it testing for problems... which Antivirus are you running and what are the preferences set to?

BC_Programmer


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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #2 on: December 22, 2016, 06:48:50 AM »
If you cannot hear any "access" by the drive, then it may be Windows autorun polling. Windows will check optical drives every second to see if there is a disc inserted. The HDD LED is activated by many Optical drives, so the once-per-second autorun poll could result in the HDD activity light blinking every second.  Oddly it's not usually in-sync with the LED on the drive itself.
I was trying to dereference Null Pointers before it was cool.

DaveLembke



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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #3 on: December 22, 2016, 07:20:10 AM »
Good point BC. I forgot about that and that would do that too. Usually you will hear the drive spin up though when it does this or always spinning. Its strange that some drives will come to rest and others will spin constant with same disc resting in the tray of the optical drive.

BC_Programmer


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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #4 on: December 22, 2016, 03:32:39 PM »
Optical drives usually optimize media checks, I think. If the system asks it "hey, do you have a disc" and the drive tray hasn't been opened since the last time it asked, it will give the same reply.

And of course optical drives don't usually spin up anything if they have no disc inserted :P
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Geek-9pm

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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #5 on: December 22, 2016, 04:52:00 PM »
Thanks for the answers.
It is still a mystery  :(
It just might be indexing. But turning off indexing is a real core. I have four partition son this drive and I will have to turn it off on every one.  :-[

EDIT: I tried Windows  10 and it looks like the same thing. A very short visible flash about once a second. In Windows 10 I( used the task manager and got a graphic showing spikes in the I/O but no clue as to what does it.
Reboot to Windows XP and turn off index service. No change.

 I am starting to think it might be hardware. Is that possible?
« Last Edit: December 22, 2016, 05:23:04 PM by Geek-9pm »

DaveLembke



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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #6 on: December 22, 2016, 09:08:38 PM »
Quote
I am starting to think it might be hardware. Is that possible?

It is possible for electronics to fail and pulse, but I have yet to see a HDD LED driver circuit fail in this manner. I did have a 486DX 66Mhz motherboard a long time ago with the driver chip stuck high so it was constantly on and never off. At first I thought that the front panel wires were mixed up to where the Power LED connection was connected to the HDD, but nope it was on the correct pins, just constantly on solid. Other than that the computer ran fine.

To isolate the issue you can try running your system with no hard drive connected to see if the blink has the same interval. If it still blinks, then disconnect the optical drives. If it still blinks then its main board. It will likely not blink until Windows is fully loaded though at the 1 second interval/

Personally I wouldnt worry about this if system is clean of virus's and otherwise runs fine. Guessing your hard drive is healthy and you have checked it with crystaldiskinfo maybe to make sure the hard drive itself doesnt have issues.


BC_Programmer


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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #7 on: December 22, 2016, 09:17:52 PM »
If you want to eliminate the auto run polling as a suspect, you can find autorun options under "Devices" in the Settings app. If you turn it off it should serve to disable the auto-insert notification polling.

For Windows XP you can find "Auto-insert notification" as a checkbox on the Settings tab when you view the properties of the Optical drive in device manager.
I was trying to dereference Null Pointers before it was cool.

patio

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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #8 on: December 22, 2016, 09:30:42 PM »
Why would it be such a chore to turn off/adjust settings just because you have 4 partitions ? ?...that one puzzled me...
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Geek-9pm

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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #9 on: December 22, 2016, 09:49:09 PM »
Why would it be such a chore to turn off/adjust settings just because you have 4 partitions ? ?...that one puzzled me...
Most likely I did it the wrong way....
When there is a hard way and an easy way, I sometimes get the hard way. :'(

patio

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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #10 on: December 22, 2016, 10:02:11 PM »
If you need help...were here...
" Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. "

Geek-9pm

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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #11 on: December 23, 2016, 12:07:08 AM »
Thank you. It took me a long time to turn off the index.
Amway, I now have media paler running in the background playing some soft music and the light flash no longer bothers me.  ;D

DaveLembke



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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #12 on: December 23, 2016, 06:15:29 AM »
Quote
Thank you. It took me a long time to turn off the index.
Amway, I now have media paler running in the background playing some soft music and the light flash no longer bothers me.

So are you saying that indexing was what was causing it to blink -or- you gave up and decided to listen to music so that the HDD activity LED now has meaning as to why its blinking and the other blinks are blended in with actual activity of reading data for music playing?  :-\


Geek-9pm

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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #13 on: December 23, 2016, 11:00:38 AM »
DaveLembke,
I trued off index for all drives and it still has a short flash
Yes, if it is playing music I don't think about the drive light. When it has a resewn to flash, so I don't worry about it.
Otherwise when it is flashing and I don't know why,  I become concerned.

My next guess would be the *censored* HP software is snooping around to see if I want to scan something or get an update or send a fax.

So I could either un install all the HP software, or listen to some soft music.

patio

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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #14 on: December 23, 2016, 11:12:04 AM »
Just put electrical tape over the HDD light...
" Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. "

DaveLembke



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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #15 on: December 23, 2016, 09:36:08 PM »
Quote
Just put electrical tape over the HDD light...

 ;D

2:12  :P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4NlR5KQLQ8

patio

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Re: What makes my Hard Drive Light Flash?
« Reply #16 on: December 23, 2016, 09:41:27 PM »
 ;D    8)
" Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. "