New PC - why is the HDD LED flashing when idle?

FunkyT

FunkyT

FunkyT

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27 Aug 2003
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I've just knocked up a good entry level machine:

A64 3000+
MSI K9N4 Ultra-F nForce 500 Ultra
Kingston 2 x 512MB DDR2 PC4200
Seagate SATA-II 80GB 8MB cache
MSI X1300 256MB PCI-E video
Enermax 470w Noisetaker

When idle the HDD LED seems to be flashing intermittently (more often that I'd expect).

The only software I've installed is XP Home SP2b and the motherboard drivers.

Any ideas please?
 
iirc not all hdd lights flash with just the hd being accessed, some flash when the system is accessed too.

Also don't forget theres going to be bits and bobs going on in the background on the pc especially with msn etc installed.
 
right lets try again.

iirc on some motherboards (my old one did) the hd light flashes when other aspects of the system are accessed - such as the RAM for example.
Not just when the hard drive is being accessed.
 
lsg1r said:
right lets try again.

iirc on some motherboards (my old one did) the hd light flashes when other aspects of the system are accessed - such as the RAM for example.
Not just when the hard drive is being accessed.
Click to expand...

Are you sure about this? Never heard of it myself. What make of board was it?

For the record, RAM never stops being accessed, so if this is true, your red light would have never turned off.

TM
 
a very old tiny branded system and also my old dual athlon mp rig when it used the tyan board too. May have been a quirk in relation to how they were built but I also remember reading it somewhere too.
 
isnt it just a data light? even if im not doing anything mine blinks.. but thats good as there is no power light on a antec 900... although the fans are bright enough
 
lsg1r said:
right lets try again.

iirc on some motherboards (my old one did) the hd light flashes when other aspects of the system are accessed - such as the RAM for example.
Not just when the hard drive is being accessed.
Click to expand...

Think you confused RAM with the paging file. Me old Tyan MP board does no such thing, hard drive access might also be almost inaudible but still be in a state of data transfer. The system continously swaps data about even when doing nothing, also defragmentation may be set to occur when the system is idle thus the hdd light will go on.
 
Disable things like event logget, performance logs & alerts, indexer, system restore and other non essential things. If it's Vista hogging the HD and memory is normal.
 
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