Question HDD led flashing every 5 seconds on idle

[Simivok]

I'm using Win10 Pro on a pc with i5-9400f, 16gb, 1660S, Samsung 970 evo plus 500 gb sdd. I have noticed that, when the system is on idle the hdd led on the pc case is flashing every 5 seconds,
sometimes every second... It’s like it’s doing a lot of things, even though I only see system processes. The ssd usage is between 0-1%. Is this the case with anyone else? Is it normal?
This OS is already so complex that it always doing something?

Thank you in advance for reply.

 

[Bob.B]

I'm using Win10 Pro on a pc with i5-9400f, 16gb, 1660S, Samsung 970 evo plus 500 gb sdd. I have noticed that, when the system is on idle the hdd led on the pc case is flashing every 5 seconds,
sometimes every second... It’s like it’s doing a lot of things, even though I only see system processes. The ssd usage is between 0-1%. Is this the case with anyone else? Is it normal?
This OS is already so complex that it always doing something?

Thank you in advance for reply.

You could try making your startup group skinny.
See if that has any effect.

Perhaps use the resource monitor to try and get a clue.

 

[USAFRet]

I'm using Win10 Pro on a pc with i5-9400f, 16gb, 1660S, Samsung 970 evo plus 500 gb sdd. I have noticed that, when the system is on idle the hdd led on the pc case is flashing every 5 seconds,
sometimes every second... It’s like it’s doing a lot of things, even though I only see system processes. The ssd usage is between 0-1%. Is this the case with anyone else? Is it normal?
This OS is already so complex that it always doing something?

Thank you in advance for reply.

This is normal.

The system is doing things behind the scenes for housekeeping, using idle time when you are not actively using the system.

Indexing, defrag, TRIM, whatever.

 

[digitalgriffin]

I'm using Win10 Pro on a pc with i5-9400f, 16gb, 1660S, Samsung 970 evo plus 500 gb sdd. I have noticed that, when the system is on idle the hdd led on the pc case is flashing every 5 seconds,
sometimes every second... It’s like it’s doing a lot of things, even though I only see system processes. The ssd usage is between 0-1%. Is this the case with anyone else? Is it normal?
This OS is already so complex that it always doing something?

Thank you in advance for reply.

Windows is constantly logging all sorts of performance metrics to disk. Then there are swap files (page files), file caches for internet explorer, and background task like scanners, and system update. To see what is eating your disk time:

1. Right click on task bar from an admin account.
2. Menu: "Task Manager"
3. From Task Manager window, select [Performance] tab up top
4. Click the blue link "Open Resource Monitor" at the bottom
5. On Resource Monitor window, select [Disk]. Sort by "Total (B/sec)" It will give you a process id (PID)
6. in the "Disk Activity" sub window, sort by PID. And find the PID of the process that is eating a lot of disk time. The "Disk Activity" will tell you what files are getting written/read