HDD light keeps blinking

[Roland9]

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?

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Roland9,
Welcome to SF. The simple and quick answer is no.....not an issue to fret about. I would ask what Anti-virus programs you're running? And always a good idea to keep them updated daily and run them often....but that's just me.

 

[seavixen32]

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.

 

[Roland9]

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.

 

[seavixen32]

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.

 

[maxseven]

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.

 

[Roland9]

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.

 

[Corazon]

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

 

[Roland9]

^ 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.

 

[Britton30]

Hi Roland, you are right, XP and Windows 7 bear little resemblance under the hood. 7 has several things running in the background to help the users experience easier and more enjoyable. I suggest re-enabling Window's Defrag though. At default it runs automatically once a week on Wednesdays. You can change it to run when you like. It also arranges files as Windows 7 "likes" them, other defraggers don't.

Yes your drive is spinning when the computer is on unless you have it set to turn off after a time in power options.

 

[maxseven]

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.

I find it very disconcerting myself, because the LED catches my attention "what the heck is the HDD doing NOW!?". And it would REALLY drive me wild if I had an SSD, where HDD activity means wear/tear.

If you can ignore it, that's best because your HDD is not working nearly as hard as the LED would suggest, but if you can't ignore it, and you seldom use your DVD drive in that laptop, there's a nifty tool called devcon.exe with which you can make a couple shortcuts to easily disable/enable the DVD drive.

Oh, I forgot. You said:

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

Not sure what you mean by "heartbeat rate", but so long as your laptop is on, and unless you're away from it and the HDD is spun-down, your HDD spins all the time, yes. Not a problem--just remember the "heartbeat rate" of the LED means nothing wrt your hard drive.

 

[Roland9]

Hi Roland, you are right, XP and Windows 7 bear little resemblance under the hood. 7 has several things running in the background to help the users experience easier and more enjoyable. I suggest re-enabling Window's Defrag though. At default it runs automatically once a week on Wednesdays. You can change it to run when you like. It also arranges files as Windows 7 "likes" them, other defraggers don't.

Hi. I usually do the defrags myself once a month at least, but I guess I can turn it on... W7 seems very capable in maintenance (more than XP anyway).

...there's a nifty tool called devcon.exe with which you can make a couple shortcuts to easily disable/enable the DVD drive...

Not sure what you mean by "heartbeat rate", but so long as your laptop is on, and unless you're away from it and the HDD is spun-down, your HDD spins all the time, yes. Not a problem--just remember the "heartbeat rate" of the LED means nothing wrt your hard drive.

What I meant was HDD being busy at a "steady rate"...when it's not supposed to be.

I'll look around for this devcon.exe.

Again, thank you all.

 

[mjf]

ctrl+shift+esc takes you to task manager
then
Performance > Resource monitor
takes you to the resource monitor and you can see exactly what's accessing your HDDs.

 

[maxseven]

ctrl+shift+esc takes you to task manager
then
Performance > Resource monitor
takes you to the resource monitor and you can see exactly what's accessing your HDDs.

You missed the punchline--nothing is accessing his HDD.

 

[Britton30]

Hmm, guess I missed it too. If the light blinky, something is writing/reading the HDD.

 

[mjf]

ctrl+shift+esc takes you to task manager
then
Performance > Resource monitor
takes you to the resource monitor and you can see exactly what's accessing your HDDs.

You missed the punchline--nothing is accessing his HDD.

Not really.
If the OP is worried about excessive HDD activity & what is causing it then the standard measures I gave will answer the question.
If the OP is worried about the blinking light then you have given him an answer.

 

[maxseven]

The OP was worried that the regularly-blinking LED meant HDD activity. It does not.

If anyone knows how to get Windows to stop polling the DVD drive, other than as I've said disabling the driver, I for one would like to know how. And no, it's not as simple as turning off any/all autorun features.

I've done extensive research on this "heartbeat LED" problem, and apparently it doesn't plague everybody, although it does it on every one of my 5 or 6 PCs, all flavors of W7 and XP. It might, as someone mentioned earlier, be a "strictly SATA" thing but it seems to me it even does it on an old PC I have w/no SATA capability.

 

[whs]

mjf is right. The Resource Monitor > Disk tab is an excellent source of information if you want to know what is accessing your HDD.

Besides, the system writes a lot of diagnostic info on the HDD - even when you do nothing yourself. If you do not like that, you can stop the corresponding services. Just be sure what you are doing. It can come back and bite you.

 

[amir2012]

HDD light flashing every second

Better late than never !

I faced the same annoying problem last week on my Sony Vaio and here's how I solved it last night:

I installed a fresh copy of windows after which the HDD light wasn't flashing every second. Then I installed drivers and windows updates one by one and monitored the effect of each update and / driver on the HDD light. After installing DISK drivers the problem came back. SONY/Microsoft must fix their SATA and DVD drivers.

Solution for you:
No need to reinstall windows, just turn off your DVD drive when you don't need it and the flashig light will stop.

 

[mikiep]

Even though its old stuff here.... I just couldn't keep my mouth closed...
Hdd blinks because.... you didn't read the instructions from Microsoft.

If you have a battery back up.. then it you might be able to disable 'Microsoft Write Cache Flushing' in Device Manager on your drives. Try it - Look at your hard drive light.