Hard drive light blinking for unknown reason

[slimkiller]

I have been searching for hours now for a solution, but I can't seen to find any, my hard drive light is constantly blinking even when no program is running, i tried googling it and check the windows task manager, but with no solution. So do you guys know of any sofware that allows me to check the programs using the hard drive?

btw in windows task manager, svchost is using the most memory (144,476K) , I checked the services, but all the programs are legit. The second one is explorer.exe, which uses 72,000K, is this normal? and how do I check what explorer.exe uses?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Ijack]

What OS? The Windows 7 (and I believe Vista) Task Manager lets you see which programs are accessing the hard disk. ("Resorce Monitor" from the "Performance" tab.)

If you want to know all the gory details, use DiskMon from SysInternals.

 

[slimkiller]

Yup, I got windows 7, so I checked the resource monitor on the Disk tab, in the Process with Disk Activity tab, its showing svchost.exe (secsvcs), system and svchost.exe (LocalServiceNetowrkRestricted) most of the time. Nothing suspicious, could it be one of the services in them?

And I also downloaded Diskmon, it definetly showing activity every second or so, but its not showing from what, on the website, the screenshot of the program shows a device tab, but I don't have it on the one I downloaded, any ideas how to get it working?

 

[slimkiller]

Heres a log from Diskmon:
# Time Duration Disk Request Sector Length
0 -3.027568 0.00023842 0 Write 46024326 16
1 -2.588472 0.00061989 0 Write 46024326 16
2 -1.027657 0.00004768 0 Write 41039118 8
3 -0.994029 0.00023842 0 Write 291264357 8
4 -0.027394 0.00023842 0 Write 47040478 24
5 -0.026771 0.00023842 0 Write 46990294 8
6 -0.026298 0.00023842 0 Write 46990270 8
7 -0.025531 0.00023842 0 Write 203407077 8
8 -0.024949 0.00023842 0 Write 203406517 8
9 -0.024410 0.00023842 0 Write 203406509 8
10 0.972465 0.00023842 0 Write 41027342 8
11 0.972903 0.00004768 0 Write 41012382 8
12 0.973169 0.00023842 0 Write 41027254 8
13 0.973898 0.00023842 0 Write 41027270 8
14 5.072324 0.00004768 0 Write 47040502 8
15 5.106130 0.00004768 0 Write 46990286 8
16 5.107780 0.00004768 0 Write 46990278 8
17 5.109147 0.00004768 0 Write 411194669 8
18 6.972280 0.00005722 0 Write 536850317 8
19 10.222298 0.00005722 0 Write 41012126 8
20 10.257731 0.00005722 0 Write 203407085 8
21 10.259335 0.00005722 0 Write 203406525 8
22 10.260035 0.00005722 0 Write 203406501 8
23 12.972351 0.00005722 0 Write 41012134 8
24 15.272328 0.00005722 0 Write 47040510 16
25 15.309131 0.00005722 0 Write 46990294 8
26 15.310732 0.00005722 0 Write 46990270 8
27 15.312577 0.00005722 0 Write 203541789 8
28 16.972261 0.00005722 0 Write 411194669 8
29 17.009051 0.00005722 0 Write 411202109 8
30 19.904026 0.00026703 0 Read 41350582 467
31 20.187006 0.00000954 0 Write 41050670 1
32 20.472298 0.00023842 0 Write 47040526 8
33 20.472857 0.00023842 0 Write 46990286 8
34 20.473505 0.00023842 0 Write 41040286 8
35 20.474272 0.00023842 0 Write 203407093 8
36 20.474777 0.00023842 0 Write 203406517 8
37 20.475249 0.00023842 0 Write 203406509 8
38 20.972213 0.00005722 0 Write 46983382 5
39 22.972436 0.00005722 0 Write 41001182 8
40 24.972398 0.00005722 0 Write 40975366 8
41 25.572185 0.00005722 0 Write 47040534 16
42 25.572765 0.00005722 0 Write 46990294 8
43 25.573228 0.00005722 0 Write 46990278 8
44 25.573929 0.00005722 0 Write 203407101 8
45 25.574606 0.00005722 0 Write 291264357 8
46 26.972424 0.00011444 0 Write 536850317 8
47 27.012099 0.00005722 0 Write 203541789 8
48 30.722264 0.00015259 0 Write 47851414 8
49 30.760944 0.00015259 0 Write 203406525 8
50 30.762520 0.00015259 0 Write 203406501 8
51 35.772421 0.00015259 0 Write 47040550 16
52 35.805190 0.00015259 0 Write 46990286 8
53 35.806740 0.00015259 0 Write 46990270 8
54 35.808069 0.00015259 0 Write 411202469 8

Sorry for double post, website not allowing me to edit

 

[Ijack]

My apologies! I should have pointed you to ProcessMonitor, not DiskMon (although both are useful tools). This will let you see what processes are reading and writing which files. I think this is your best bet at discovering what is happening.

This tool produces a huge amount of information, not only file access but also Registry and Network, so you may want to look at the filtering options to concentrate on what you are interested in. You'll probably need to play with it for a bit to get the information you need.

 

[btk1w1]

There are a few things that Windows 7 does now that never used to be done (pre-Vista) while the PC is idle.

It was a significant issue with Vista as there would actually be quite a bit of noise, disk thrashing occuring. The disk thrashing issue is somewhat resolved with 7 but the processess that caused it remain.

I believe the processes are:
Indexing
Superfetch
Windows Defender
Disk Defragmenter

the top two being the biggest reason for disk activity while the pc is idle.

I wrote this from the perspective of responding to a new Win 7 user, apologies if you are familiar with the operating system and this is something new.

 

[slimkiller]

Alright, I downloaded the program and observed it for a while and it seems the most one that repeats is in svchost.exe, more specifically, in the registy, the most one being repeated is:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\DeviceClasses\{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}\##?#IDE#DiskST9320423AS_____________________________0002SDM1#4&1c39086a&0&0.0.0#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b}\#\Control\Linked

Any ideas why?

@btk1w1- the problem started happening recently and I didn't really mess around with the MS stuff, so I don't know if the problem is from them and I disabled indexing and scheduling anyways.

Thanks for the reply guy, I really appreciate it hope this problem would end soon, the blinking light is annoying.

 

[jivdis1x]

svchost.exe can be a number of things. Legit programs, malware or virus.
Refer to btk1w1 post because those are likily problems. I myself have disable all those feature in windows 7

 

[slimkiller]

Ok, I did all the things btk1w1 said, but the problem still persists, but heres a good limitation, it happens in safe mode as well, so I guess whats causing it is something from windows or a driver, right?

btw, is it possible to open procmon in safe mode? It gave me an error when I opened it.