Hard Drive activity light constantly blinking - new WIN7 Ultimate Dell PC

Anonymous
2009-12-05T23:05:42+00:00

I've been troubleshooting this problem off and on for weeks on my brand new WIN-7 64 Ultimate Dell XPS 8000 (I7-860 1TB HD 8GB Ram).    Searching around has found many recommendations and a couple of resolved issues, (more non-resolved), but none of the recommendations has helped me.  

I got a feeling that this may be a Dell-specific issue, but I got no response in the Dell forums.   I'm sure if I call Dell support, all I will get is recommendation to put it back to factory default.  no thanks! 

I have disabled all the suspects, at least temporarily to see if it has an affect:

Windows Indexing & Search

Windows Firewall

Windows Defender

System Restore

Remote Differential Compression

Windows Fax & Scan

Superfetch

Seaport

With all these off, the blinking was clearly less busy, but there was still a steady heartbeat type of blink.   I since re-enabled Defender and System Restore.    (Even if they were to blame, that is hardly an acceptable solution/workaround!!!)

I've studied disk activity in PERFMON and there is some occasional kernel activity and event logging.  I took a couple of window snapshots I can post (if I can figure how).   I also created HijackThis log.  

Sometimes the disk activity PERFMON window is blank but yet the light continues to blink!!!  huh???

I have not disabled hibernate (there was a suggestion somewhere it could be involved).  I use it regularly.   But I can try that too you think it might help.

I am at my wits end and a little overwhelmed at all the data to study and search for.  I hate diddling with services and the registry, fearful of getting in over my head and creating a mess I can't get out of.  

Also, there is no additional security software and I did not install any preinstalled trial crapola.

Help!!!!!!!!

I will post the hijack this log in the next post

  Update to clarify:  What I reported above is basically about out-of-the-box behavior... not application or CPU-bound related. The system was pretty clean with minimal extra software/hardware installed.

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Anonymous
2012-09-23T00:01:56+00:00

Hard drive light blinks quckly because Microsoft does what is called something like  Write Cache Flushing ... flushes disk drive writes that might be in that cache to disk?  Simple.

The reason is .. if you have a power failure.. you will lose some data from that cache and/or corrupt something that may be important.   Takes a hit on drive performance and life expectancy too.  So some of the experts say.

If you have a battery backup.. or most laptops with a battery can.. Disable it!

.. In device manager the hard drive properties usually has a check box for enable write caching ..  and some will have another check box...  Disable Microsoft Write Cache Flushing.    <  add a check to that guys box...now look at your non very often blinking Hdd light... works  same with some of the DVD/CD drives, same controllers probably. .

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-10-29T12:48:00+00:00

    Thanks Mike M999! Disabling the CD/DVD drive (Toshiba laptop - Win 7) stopped the blinking HD light every second. Now that I know it's just a constant monitor feature and not a trouble, I'll re-enable it.

    I had tried turning off the defrag as another suggested, but that didn't change a thing for my situation. Might work for others though.

    Thanks again for sharing this.

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-11-09T15:03:15+00:00

    Working on a new product.  I have the same problem since adding a Lite-on slim SATA DVD drive to the design.  Low level chirping at 1 second intervals for minutes in a row - It seems to come and go a few times an hour.  Seems to happen on all systems with the DVD drive integrated, none without.

    So is it hardware or software, and who can fix it? Looks like I am not the only one with the issue.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-11-10T18:24:46+00:00

    And turning off indexing has fixed it.

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-11-12T11:32:23+00:00

    That can be compared to choppoing off your hand when you have cut your little finger!

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