HDD led constantley blinking??

[gingo]

I just build a new PC. I installed a fresh legit copy of windows XP Home and updated all my drivers, ect. After using my computer for over a day now I notice my HDD led never stops blinking for more than a second, even when NOTHING is going on. It seems to blink in a continuous rythm, like it'll blink on for half a second, then turn off for almost a second, then repeat, over and over and over! There are NO viruses on my system, I hadn't even connected to the internet before I noticed it, and all the software I installed onto my newley formatted hard drive was virus free. What is it doing? Is it even accessing the hard drive? or is it a problem with the led headers on my mobo or something?

 

[PsycoPhreak]

That would be the "Auto insert notification" feature of windows.

It "checks" every second or two, to see if a cd has been inserted into the drive, if so, it runs the "autorun" file on the cd, if it has one...of course.

 

[CDuddley]

Can you hear the hard drive clicking? If it's not clicking, then it would probably be an LED problem. Otherwise sounds like one of your software packages or WinXP is fooling around with your hard drive. Do you have a virus scanner or anything like that? They can constantly pound your HDD's as they try to hunt down a virus.

-C Duddley

 

[CrystalMethod]

Another thing it could be is onboard sound, or video disk caching.

 

[gingo]

Well, dont really hear the hard drive, its a nice quiet seagate cuda IV. plus over the noise of my fans. But no, I do not have any virus scanner. I do have onboard sound, and I dont really know what video disk caching is, lol.

 

[wumeeks]

i had a similar problem cus i a couple case connectors were semi-loose. i would try removing the led light and then just plug it back in.

 

[Omega Destroyer]

Well if you want to check if data is actually being written or read from your hard drive you could go to
control panel, click on admnisterative tools, the open performance
Once it loads, you'll see a bar with icons on it. There will be a + icon beside and X icon.
click the + icon (add)
A little window will pop up, and from the drop down menu for performance object choose physical disk.
Then highlight and add the following
Disk bytes/sec
Disk read bytes/sec
Disk write bytes/sec
Then close that window, and you'll see a little graph of the info you just asked for. I suggest you take a look at the numerical values (the little notepad icon). Next time you see your hdd light go on, check to see if any bytes were writen or read. If not, then there is a problem with the lights. If there is a significant amount read or written then it's because the HDD is actually being accessed.
Hope this helps

 

[JigPu]

I highly doubt the lights have a problem. I would tend to agree with the auto-insert notification diagnosis. Windows will every 5 seconds or so access the CD drive to see if you stuck a CD in there. If you disable it, it should go away.

Also, I have a DVD drive that after I stick a CD (or DVD) in it, causes the light to stay constantly on. Even after taking it out. It's not a light problem, just a stupid bug in the drive I think.

JigPu

 

[CrystalMethod]

Ok, I'm assuming you don't have onboard video (please correct me if I'm wrong). The onboard sound will use a little bit of memory/virtual memory. My brother ran into a simmilar problem recently, and your problem seems simmilar. He has recently upgraded to a P4 2.4 Ghz, with an Asus motherboard (I can't recall which right now). He had initially been using the onboard sound, but he noticed that his system was disk caching to the HDD way too much for his liking. He did all the usual stuff, checking what windows was running in the background, defraggig, re-installing, but the system kept writing to the HDD. He then thought that it might be the onboard sound that was diskcaching to the HDD (he used to be a computer tech). He installed his old Soundblaster Live! from one of his other systems, and the problem dissapeared. He told me about this two days ago, so when I read your post, it was one of the first things I thought of.

 

[gingo]

No, I dont have onboard video. How do I turn off the auto insert notification. I know how to do it in win 98 but it doesn't give me the option in XP under the cdrom device manager.

I'll start looking for a sound card, hopefully it'll fix the problem.

 

[wumeeks]

Did you try unplugging and replugging in the HD LED light to the moboard? I'm serious man....sometimes simple things like that work. I just build my new p4 setup and it did the same thing although i didn't notice it until after i installed XP pro. At first I thought it was cus of the raid setup or raid drivers..but all I did was unplug and replug and the light works when it suppose to now.

 

[gingo]

I'll try it, Its such a pain b/c my floppy connector is right over the led headers, but I'll do it.