HDD light keeps blinking

Hello,

I have recently obtained a laptop with W7 Home Premium installed. This is the first time I'm using W7.

My HDD light on the laptop keeps blinking, even when I'm not doing anything, just staring at the desktop. I don't notice anything on the performance, everything seems to run fine.

One thing I was immediately aware of is how W7 seems to run a lot of processes in the background; indexing, defragging, etc... I have turned these off, along with stuff like WDefender, Firewall, my hdd light still keeps blinking.

I have also noticed that googling this issue reveals lots of results with mixed replies. Some say HDD light is supposed to be blinking and/or this is completely normal, others say it might be an issue.

Just as I was writing this, I also downloaded a gadget for monitoring hdd: Drives Meter. Looking at the graph, the hdd doesn't seem to be doing much. It usually stays on %0,
just some little activity here and there... Yet the light is blinking on a heartbeat rate. Bear in mind, I am running Comodo+Eset at the background; however, for comparison, on my PC (running XP Pro) which also runs Comodo+Eset, there is no blinking whatsoever.

So my question: Is this actually a problem?

All that's happening is the drive being indexed by Windows. It does take a long time, particularly with today's bigger hard drives, but after a few days, the drive chattering will hardly be noticeable.

Thanks for the welcome and the quick replies... Was looking around a bit this forum seems quite active and useful. :)

@linnemeyerhere: As I said in OP, I'm running Comodo firewall (D+ inactive) and Eset Nod32... These programs update themselves nicely anway.

@seavixen32: As I said in OP, I have turned indexing off , also defrag.

Roland9 said:

Thanks for the welcome and the quick replies... Was looking around a bit this forum seems quite active and useful. :)

@linnemeyerhere: As I said in OP, I'm running Comodo firewall (D+ inactive) and Eset Nod32... These programs update themselves nicely anway.

@seavixen32: As I said in OP, I have turned indexing off , also defrag.

I noticed that just after I posted.

No matter, there's nothing to worry about unduly, the drive will soon settle down. There will be some activity with Superfetch as Windows learns which are your favourite programs.

Do you have a CD/DVD/BD drive in that laptop? I'll bet if you (temporarily) disable the driver for it, the blinking will go away. A lot of PCs don't know the difference between polling the DVD drive (to see if a disc's been inserted) and accessing the hard drive.

maxseven said:

Do you have a CD/DVD/BD drive in that laptop? I'll bet if you (temporarily) disable the driver for it, the blinking will go away. A lot of PCs don't know the difference between polling the DVD drive (to see if a disc's been inserted) and accessing the hard drive.

Bingo!

Disabled my DVD drive and no more blinking... Well, it still comes on once in a while, but definitely no more blinking. I guess this will do nicely enough.

But that's so weird. So if I don't disable it, the hdd will actually spin at a heartbeat rate? Doesn't that shorten the hdd's lifetime?

Anyway, thanks a bunch. :)

maxseven's answer was very clever, I didn't know that either. :)

But you needn't worry about your HD with the CD/DVD drive enabled - strictly speaking, the HD light going on means that there's data going through the onboard SATA controller, so the periodic blinking could simply be the DVD drive polling and wouldn't affect the HD at all. It keeps continuously spinning anyway :)

^ I guess it doesn't do any real harm, but just thinking how my PC has no hdd light activity at all when it's idle, I got a little uneasy seeing the non stop blink.