Constantly blinking HDD activity light???

[hedshotx]

Hello, I have been noticing that the hdd activity light on the front of my pc has been blinking pretty nonstop lately. It is always a brief flash every second or two, not a steady light like if I'm doing something like gaming or anything. I just built this pc approximately 30 days ago, so I really doubt and really hope that it isn't a failing drive. Everything has been pretty smooth computer wise lately, though earlier today there was a second or two hitch while opening something in My Computer, and I heard a very faint "chick" sounding noise and then the folder opened. I know that noises from computers in general, especially hard drives, are very bad omens, but honestly I've heard the noise maybe one other time a bit later today, and haven't heard any of the noises since. I ran disc checker a couple hours ago and it ran with 0 errors or unindexed files, but there were a couple EA records processed and 44 reparse records. I have no clue what that means but from what google tells me, it's somewhat normal. Could those have been the cause for the hitch earlier and the quiet noise I heard? The flashing is still going on after disc checker.

My main worry is that if the light indicates my hard drive is never idle, that will quickly wear down my hdd, correct? I don't want that to happen and so want to fix it. Hopefully it's not too late :/. I never have hard drives fail on me, especially brand spankin new ones. The drive btw is a WD Caviar Blue 500GB SATA Hard Drive - 7200, 16MB, SATA-6G. It's nice and has great reviews, so again I'm hoping its something else and not the hard drive failing. The hitch while opening a folder earlier and then the faint noise really worry me though. I leave my pc on 24/7 if that gives you any info. What can I do to fix the blinking light and figure out why my hdd is never idle?

 

[Hawkeye22]

You could always use the resource monitor to see which processes are utilizing the drive, however, this seems pretty normal to me. Virus scanners, windows indexing service, and other stuff tries to run during idle cycles. I'd be more concerned if the drive light stayed on while I was doing nothing or away from the computer. Occasional blinking is fine.

 

[hedshotx]

That's exactly why it worries me though. I first started noticing it when I go to bed because my desktop is the only source of light, and I noticed that even though I was no longer using the pc and trying to sleep, the red light just keeps flashing. It still is flashing in the morning when I wake up. How can I determine the culprit for why it's doing this? I really don't want my hdd reading 24/7 until it breaks 🙁

 

[hedshotx]

Anyone have any thoughts for me to try and figure out why my hard drive is never idling and the light keeps briefly flashing every couple seconds?

 

[Hawkeye22]

As I said in my last post... "You could always use the resource monitor to see which processes are utilizing the drive, however, this seems pretty normal to me."

 

[hedshotx]

Yes, I opened up the resource monitor to see what I could find, and while Idle, the Disk Activity tab only showed System and svshost being active, which to my understanding is normal. These two background processes wouldn't naturally be the reason for the hard drive being read all the time is it? I am running malwarebytes and avast at the process to see if anything can be found.

 

[Hawkeye22]

All running processes should be listed in the task manager and resource monitor. If it isn't showing up on the list, then it's a rootkit.

You may see more than one svchost and each svchost can run several processes. This is normal. To see this, open a command prompt (possibly as an admin) and type in:

tasklist /svc

 

[nathoka]

my led blinks very rapid when playing qood videos although i checked resouce monitor saying only 0-2 % activiry......