Why does my Hard Drive Activity Light Constantly Blink

[ajamminman]

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.

I hear ya. I did a clean install so I basically did wipe the drive and installed Windows 7 as if it were new media. I didn't have this issue with XP....had others but not this one. I would buy an Mac before a reinstall Windows 7 again.

 

[computersplus]

Remember

just remember that you are running 7 on a computer designed for XP so it's not really a fair trial of 7 we can only expect so much of our old hardware as operating systems improve they utilize the hardware and drivers in different ways so as to improve speed and stability we always seem to go through this with new OS I remember when XP came people were screaming wanting to lynch MS but now look same thing is happening with 7 and XP it's really actually comical when you stand back and look at it.

 

[Lordbob75]

How old are these harddrive(s)?

Also, click start and type MSCONFIG, and hit enter. On the box that pops up, choose Diagnostic Start up. Then restart. Does the blinking still occur?

~Lordbob

 

[Jambe]

I tried diagnostic start up and it made no difference--it still blinks. This is on a MSI G41 mobo with AMI BIOS (which I earlier mistakenly referred to as Award) and new WD 500GB Black HD. (Windows 7)

I did notice that it is a S.M.A.R.T. drive and tried to find how to turn it off but I found nothing in the BIOS where I could turn it off. So this is another possibility to check.

 

[computersplus]

Hard Drive

i have a laptop in the shop right now doing the same thing only it's running XP the cause of the problem is a bad block on the hard drive so i would run check disk or western digital lifeguard tools on that drive also check the event viewer in control panel admin tools the error about any issue with the drive will show up under system

 

[Lordbob75]

I tried diagnostic start up and it made no difference--it still blinks. This is on a MSI G41 mobo with AMI BIOS (which I earlier mistakenly referred to as Award) and new WD 500GB Black HD. (Windows 7)

I did notice that it is a S.M.A.R.T. drive and tried to find how to turn it off but I found nothing in the BIOS where I could turn it off. So this is another possibility to check.

If this still occurs with the diagnostic boot up, then it is likely either the drive firmware, or the motherboard.

~Lordbob

 

[OppfinnarJocke]

I have the same problem on my brand new Dell Precision M4400 which came with Win 7 Pro x64 pre-installed. When I attach a USB thumb drive, after using it, closing any programs (inc Explorer) accessing it, the LED on the thumb drive blinks approx once per 10 seconds. And this goes on constantly while the drive is attached.

There seems to be no way to turn off indexing for this one, Properties have no option for that. The Resource Monitor show no activity on the USB drive, but I've noticed that the LED seems to blink at the same time as there is activity on the HD. Could it be that activity on any drive shows as activity on all drives?

// OppfinnarJocke

 

[Chuckles]

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?

 

[Tgrds]

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?

 

[Lordbob75]

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

 

[Tgrds]

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:

[FONT=&quot]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[/FONT][FONT=&quot] and lastalive1.dat[/FONT][FONT=&quot] 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. :sarc:[/FONT]

 

[Idle]

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.

 

[Caboov]

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.

 

[Tgrds]

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.

 

[Hellenback]

Samsung DVD-RW

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

 

[BigRed80]

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...

http://www.sevenforums.com/performa...nstant-hard-drive-activity-7.html#post1892341

Any ideas?

Thanks and cheers