Why does my Hard Drive Activity Light Constantly Blink

Page 6 of 6 FirstFirst ... 456

  1. Posts : 6
    Win XP and 7
       #51

    Lordbob75 said:
    Tgrds said:
    Chuckles said:
    There is a service in both Vista and 7 that writes to two files lastalive0.dat and lastalive1.dat. This happens every second hence the flashing. It is like Window's heartbeat. What is it for? Perhaps it helps when things crash. Every time this is written, various logs are written to too. Years ago we said that Windows was the result of a programmer gone mad. Still true?
    Yup I have the same problem with my hard drive light flashing with a low pulse every other second even will idling. I have also shut everything off I could think of and what I see left when using "Resource Monitor" is:

    lastalive0.dat
    lastalive1.dat

    After searching across the web I have found some folks claiming that these little bad boys are somehow a part of the Task Scheduler, and that you can somehow turn something off there to get rid of these. Any thoughts?
    If they are in the task scheduler, then you can manually go in and delete them. This should fix that.

    ~Lordbob
    Actually I found how to disable these in the registry:

    TimeStampInterval is a registry key that defines how often the LastAlive info is written to the harddisk.

    It is at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Reliability\

    By changing the registry value of TimeStampInterval to zero from one, you will stop the writes to the lastalive0.dat
    and lastalive1.dat files on your harddisk.

    I've done this on my machine and it does in fact seem to work well; however, my hard drive light is still blinking. Must be some other process.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 5
    Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit
       #52

    I know this is an old thread, but maybe some-one has finally found the answer.

    The same problem has been annoying me for ages -- both on my desktop computer running 7 Ultimate and on several I've assembled for others.

    As has been remarked, it's like a heartbeat.

    It must be fixable on the system somewhere, for my Lenovo R500 laptop, running 7 Business (and it was an upgrade from Vista) doesn't do it.

    When idle its HD light blinks only occasionally.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 10
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
       #53

    Old I know but still


    For those still reading this old thread, I've pieced together that lastalive0.dat and lastalive1.dat are data files used by the Reliability Analysis component of the Event Log service to test the hard drive for the formulation of the System Stability Index. This index rates the computer's reliability on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) and has been in effect for the life of the computer.

    Reliability Analysis Component

    In addition to the aforementioned method of disabling this interesting, useless, and mostly unknown feature, you can disable the log by opening Event Log, going to the bottom "log summary" portion, scrolling down to Microsoft-Windows-Reliability-Analysis-Engine, going in to the log, and selecting "Disable Log" in the actions pane on the left.
    Hope I helped somebody.
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 6
    Win XP and 7
       #54

    FOUND IT...!!!

    Go into Device Manager click on your "DVD/CD-Rom drives" and disable it. Bamm! no more heartbeat light flashing anymore. Problem is you have to go back in and re-enable it to use your DVD/CD-Rom drive.
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 1
    Windows 7
       #55

    Samsung DVD-RW


    I found it to be the Samsung SATA DVD-RW drive as well. Disabled...no blinking
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 5
    Win 7 Enterprise x64
       #56

    Hi all,

    I am experiencing the same blinking on my brand new company laptop, a Dell E6220. It came without a DVD/CD drive, so there is nothing to disable in the hardware manager.
    I already posted in a different thread, it seems, that Windows is trying to create two files over and over again...

    Constant hard drive activity?

    Any ideas?

    Thanks and cheers
      My Computer


 
Page 6 of 6 FirstFirst ... 456

  Related Discussions
Our Sites
Site Links
About Us
Windows 7 Forums is an independent web site and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Microsoft Corporation. "Windows 7" and related materials are trademarks of Microsoft Corp.

© Designer Media Ltd
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 05:33.
Find Us