Question Hard Drive Activity LED opposite, always on, blinks off for activity

[david03]

I recently replaced my motherboard, and I notice the hard drive activity indicator LED is opposite what I'd expect. It's always lit, and when there's drive activity, it blinks/flickers off.

I double checked the connection on the motherboard to the front panel, and it looks correct.

Is this legitimate? Are there some motherboards that just do it like this? It's an Aisurix h61g578 motherboard (1155 socket), for what it's worth.

 

[rgd1101]

maybe test with another board. probably quality control issue

 

[david03]

Well, my old motherboard, an Intel DH67CF, didn't do that, but it's broken, which is why I replaced it.

But it doesn't seem appropriate to try to replace the whole motherboard again, just due to odd behavior for an activity LED.

Looks like the same issue reported here:

Question - HDD LED is lit constantly ?

Greetings. m.2 ssd kingspec on 256Gb is connected to the motherboard (GIGABYTE B450M DS3H). When i turn on the computer while the computer is loading, the indicator for accessing the hard disk flashes correctly, after loading the OS, the hdd indicator starts to light constantly, and at the time...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[david03]

I can also see the LED on the NVMe drive (a Fanxiang S500pro) with the same behavior; always on, and flickering off during data transfer. So the front panel drive activity light is just mirroring that, it seems.

I think this is normal for some drives. For example, this is mentioned for this Intel SSD.

"SSD Activity Light on the System Is Always On "
https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...000033349/memory-and-storage/client-ssds.html

This is expected for a system with the Intel® Optane™ SSD 905P series attached.

The reason is that this device is set to have the light ON if there's no activity on the device and goes OFF when the device is being accessed.

This is the opposite of many storage devices. (So it shows OFF if there's no activity on the device and goes ON when the device is being accessed.)