Why does my Hard Drive Activity Light Constantly Blink

[nate42nd]

If you want to know what it is doing, just use the resource monitor / disk activity (type: Resource in the start menu)

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I don't know what I did without this useful tool in Windows 7.

What a great tool this is. Good advice smarteyeball!

 

[ajamminman]

Are your SATA and HD drivers up-to-date?

Unsure. When I ask Windows it says that the latest drivers for that hardware is up to date.

 

[ajamminman]

I'm telling you your drive is working overtime trying to index all those scattered files do a good defrag and it will help reduce that disk activity.

I did the defrag. It did need it but it didn't help the disk activity issue. I will leave it on during the day to see if it is the indexing. It has been running for 15 hours at this point.

 

[ajamminman]

Well, the computer has been running for 28 hours straight and it is still disk activity light is still consistently flashing. I've been looking at the Resource Monitor. I wouldn't consider myself a power user so I don't fully understand all the information it provides. One thing I do notice is that NT Kernel & System use about 19% of CPU consumption constantly. Also CPU Usage never drops under 30% and spikes to 50% while idle. The maximum frequency hovers around 60%. Are any of those numbers alarming to anyone?

 

[computersplus]

Consider This

Something not discussed here about this.

Consider this:

If you just upgraded the OS there is a very real possibility that your computer may have been infected prior to the upgrade and now that you have upgraded it's amplified itself (one reason I do not recommend upgrades)

I would scan your computer with like a trial of Kaspersky Anti Virus and then MalwareBytes Antimalware Cleaner and SuperAntiSpyware just to make sure you are clean.

 

[Jambe]

I know for a fact that the blinking is not caused by a virus or malware. How? A computer not online and with no outside programs blinks.

 

[computersplus]

Drive Diagnostics

have you ran any drive diagnostics on the affected drives?

 

[computersplus]

Startup

have you unchecked everything in your startup list there has to be something that is tying up the memory and hard drive access.

 

[Jambe]

have you ran any drive diagnostics on the affected drives?

No. I know it is not a defective drive problem. Unless multiple drives of different manufacturers are defective.

I have been researching this, intermittently, for over a year and still do not have the answer.

 

[computersplus]

Background Services

have you looked at the background services to see what's running over and above the microsoft services in msconfig go to services tab and check hide all microsoft services and see what else there is target those first uncheck them!

 

[Jambe]

have you unchecked everything in your startup list there has to be something that is tying up the memory and hard drive access.

I admit I have not eliminated everything from the startup list. I'll have to try that.

 

[computersplus]

Indexing

Also you have to take into account the amount of data on your drive the more data there is the longer it will take to index it.

 

[Jambe]

All indexing is turned off. (if your reply was directed to me.)

 

[computersplus]

Activity

All indexing is turned off. (if your reply was directed to me.)

how is the activity with indexing off?

 

[Jambe]

No change. A bit more than one second between blinks.

(My main complaint about this disk activity is this: I use Wizmo and if I run it when there is disk activity (the blink) the computer goes into sleep mode but then immediately comes back to life. Then it takes longer to sleep when Wizmo is run again.)

 

[computersplus]

Power Settings

try killing all the power saving settings

 

[ajamminman]

I've killed all power saving, indexing, eliminated much of the start up services, turned off most Windows Features, ran a full virus scan and the light still blinks like its measuring my heartbeat.

 

[computersplus]

Blinking

where are we at with the blinking if it's just intermittent blinking that's fine but hearing the hard drive thrashing and seeing the light on almost constant is another.

 

[ajamminman]

where are we at with the blinking if it's just intermittent blinking that's fine but hearing the hard drive thrashing and seeing the light on almost constant is another.

Like I mentioned earlier, I wouldn't mind so much but the disk activity seems to be causing recorded audio to skip. I do a lot of digitizing of cassettes and albums using Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio but I am unable to any since the upgrade. I am assuming that the disk activity is causing the skipping.

 

[computersplus]

Upgrade

well I gotta tell you that doing an upgrade is the worst thing to do you would be better served to just wipe the disk clean and start over and I mean delete the partition create a new one format it and install 7 not upgrade to it these forums are littered with problems stemming from upgrades I've said a thousand times that Microsoft needs to stop offering upgrades it does nothing but cause trouble and gives them more of a bum rap because people do it and when it doesn't work properly they bash the OS itself you have to remember if you have any existing problem with the operating system that you are upgrading the upgrade will only magnify the issue.