HDD Light

[Guest]

I have noticed that my HDD Light seems to be flashing every few seconds even
when idle. I looked up some information online and it said to disable
auto-run features for cd/dvd rom. I am not sure if this is the cause or not
but I did it and the light flashes less often than it did. It used to flash
every second pretty much but now its every 2-3 secs somtimes and sometimes
longer. Sometimes it can be up to 10-20 secs before it flashes again but
often within every 5 seconds.

The computer is the Dell Dimension E521 with AMD processor, 2GB of RAM.
It is only just over a week old.

Is this normal for the HDD Light to flash every few seconds, it doesn't
really make a noise when it does so. Sometimes you hear the Hard-Disk working
very briefly but quite often it doesn't make a noise.

Is this a problem or normal?
Does anyone else get this?
Is it to do with software or vista?
Is there anything I can do to stop it happening like this?

Any help is appriciated.
Thanks

 

[Dustin Harper]

It's normal computer behavior. Windows uses the hard drive for a lot of
things, even when idle. The page file is on the hard drive, it indexes the
hard drive for faster searches, etc.

 

[Mac]

Open Task Manager - Processes - options choose columns - the IO ones will
show what is using your disk.

 

[Guest]

Firstly, when I go to the C Drive, the option for "Index this drive for
faster searching" is unticked. Secondly I don't understand the IO stuff.

Do you lot have the HDD light flashing/blinking every couple of seconds even
when idle?

 

[Dustin Harper]

Right click your task bar (or hit Ctrl, Alt, Delete) and choose "Task
Manager".

Click the "Performance" tab, then the "Resource Monitor..." button. Then
click on the "Disk" in the bottom. It wil tell tou what process and file is
using the hard drive at what time. If you can find the program that is
causing it, then we can find if it can be disabled or not.

If you have 1 GB or less of RAM, it may just be hitting it every few seconds
because of the page file. If not, it may be a program that uses a lot of
disk access.

Another reason may be that it is the SuperFetch part of Windows. It caches
files that your computer may need to fill up your RAM in case you need it.
It is supposed to make Windows faster.

Let us know what programs are using the most disk access in the Resource
Monitor, and we can see what we can do from there.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--

 

[Guest]

I don't know what I am meant to be looking for in that.
Does everyone here have this HDD light flashing every few secs? or is it
just me?

 

[Nick Mason]

I don't know what I am meant to be looking for in that.
Does everyone here have this HDD light flashing every few secs? or is
it just me?

No it isn't just you, it happens to everyone, that's what other people have
been telling you.

Your PC is rarely idle, when you stop using it your PC will do all kinds of
stuff, indexing files for faster searching, preloading stuff it thinks you
might need to improve performance.

It could be your virus checker doing a scan or antispyware checking your
system. It might be doing backups if you've set them up or it might be
creating a new restore point.

Do you have the Vista side bar showing? Do you have the slide show gadget
showing, if you do it has to load the new pictures, this needs HDD activity,
they don't appear by magic!