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The HD led flashes at a 4 HZ pace - why dies it ?
Hello All,
I've noticed a number of times that the HD-activity led of my XPsp3 computer flashes continuously in an about 4 HZ rhythm, and today I decided to ask: What is accessing my HD that way ? Is it really needed ? This way the HD will never go into its suspended/sleep mode. Regards, Rudy Wieser |
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#2
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The HD led flashes at a 4 HZ pace - why dies it ?
On Mon, 10 Feb 2014 13:48:51 +0100, R.Wieser wrote:
Hello All, I've noticed a number of times that the HD-activity led of my XPsp3 computer flashes continuously in an about 4 HZ rhythm, and today I decided to ask: What is accessing my HD that way ? Is it really needed ? This way the HD will never go into its suspended/sleep mode. Try logging the disk access using Process Monitor before going into suspend/sleep mode. Use advanced output mode if you want all the details (mostly kernel-mode accesses). |
#3
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The HD led flashes at a 4 HZ pace - why dies it ?
R.Wieser wrote:
Hello All, I've noticed a number of times that the HD-activity led of my XPsp3 computer flashes continuously in an about 4 HZ rhythm, and today I decided to ask: What is accessing my HD that way ? Is it really needed ? This way the HD will never go into its suspended/sleep mode. Regards, Rudy Wieser Some DVD drives hit the bus at that rate and it flashes the HD light. Dell latitude laptops all do it, anyway. -- On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk. |
#4
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The HD led flashes at a 4 HZ pace - why dies it ?
Hello Ron,
Some DVD drives hit the bus at that rate and it flashes the HD light. Even when the drive is not in use by me (no DVD in it) ? Odd. Dell latitude laptops all do it, anyway. I forgot to mentuion the type of PC it happens on, its a small tower version. Regards, Rudy Wieser -- Origional message: Ron Hardin schreef in berichtnieuws ... R.Wieser wrote: Hello All, I've noticed a number of times that the HD-activity led of my XPsp3 computer flashes continuously in an about 4 HZ rhythm, and today I decided to ask: What is accessing my HD that way ? Is it really needed ? This way the HD will never go into its suspended/sleep mode. Regards, Rudy Wieser Some DVD drives hit the bus at that rate and it flashes the HD light. Dell latitude laptops all do it, anyway. -- On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk. |
#5
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The HD led flashes at a 4 HZ pace - why dies it ?
On 2/11/2014 1:04 PM, R.Wieser wrote: Hello Ron,
Some DVD drives hit the bus at that rate and it flashes the HD light. Even when the drive is not in use by me (no DVD in it) ? Odd. Dell latitude laptops all do it, anyway. I forgot to mentuion the type of PC it happens on, its a small tower version. I have been following this thread and I haven't found anything that I really disagree with. But I do still have some commends and questions. First of all, how do you know this activity is preventing sleep? Regardless for the sake of argument, some activity doesn't affect the timeout timers. Secondly, many years ago I had an odd file being created in a folder that I was watching for something. Being curious and not knowing who or what was creating this file, I found a disk write utility. It wasn't one that I could use for one folder, but monitors everything. Okay, I figured good enough, how many things could Windows write to in a few minutes anyway? So running this utility, like 10 writes per second was happening while Windows was idle. Whoa! I can't keep up with that so I found an option to log this. So just running it a few minutes, I stopped it and there was hundreds of writes in the log with what file, path, what created it, etc. The mass majority of them were changes to the Windows registry. I was shocked! Nothing very big or anything, but just tiny few byte changes. Count down timers? Who knows, but there were tons of them. Most Windows machines cache writes in a buffer and waits until it is a good time to write to the drive. Anyway some things count as far as the count down timers go and some things doesn't. If they don't, then it isn't going to affect them, now is it? -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v24.3.0 Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 7 Home SP1 |
#6
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The HD led flashes at a 4 HZ pace - why dies it ?
Hello BillW50,
First of all, how do you know this activity is preventing sleep? I don't. Other than that I do not hear anything spinning up or experience any delays when I use the computer after it being inactive for a period of time. The mass majority of them were changes to the Windows registry. I could accept that when I'm working on the computer. But when it has been inactive for a period of 30+ minutes I would assume it has long since finished flushed all changes to the registry. The only thing I can really think of is a misbehaving program somewhere. Although ... Most diskwrites/reads are buffered by the OS, so actual disk access should be minimal. But before going on a hunt for it I thought I would spare me some time and check here if it was a known issue. It looks like it isn't. Regards, Rudy Wieser -- Origional message: BillW50 schreef in berichtnieuws ... I have been following this thread and I haven't found anything that I really disagree with. But I do still have some commends and questions. First of all, how do you know this activity is preventing sleep? Regardless for the sake of argument, some activity doesn't affect the timeout timers. Secondly, many years ago I had an odd file being created in a folder that I was watching for something. Being curious and not knowing who or what was creating this file, I found a disk write utility. It wasn't one that I could use for one folder, but monitors everything. Okay, I figured good enough, how many things could Windows write to in a few minutes anyway? So running this utility, like 10 writes per second was happening while Windows was idle. Whoa! I can't keep up with that so I found an option to log this. So just running it a few minutes, I stopped it and there was hundreds of writes in the log with what file, path, what created it, etc. The mass majority of them were changes to the Windows registry. I was shocked! Nothing very big or anything, but just tiny few byte changes. Count down timers? Who knows, but there were tons of them. Most Windows machines cache writes in a buffer and waits until it is a good time to write to the drive. Anyway some things count as far as the count down timers go and some things doesn't. If they don't, then it isn't going to affect them, now is it? -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v24.3.0 Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 7 Home SP1 |
#7
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The HD led flashes at a 4 HZ pace - why dies it ?
R.Wieser wrote:
Hello All, I've noticed a number of times that the HD-activity led of my XPsp3 computer flashes continuously in an about 4 HZ rhythm, and today I decided to ask: What is accessing my HD that way ? Is it really needed ? This way the HD will never go into its suspended/sleep mode. Regards, Rudy Wieser Are you allowing the hard drive to index all your files? If you are, then that *MAY* be your perceived problem - and this can be stopped by unchecking the Allow Indexing Service.... box on the C drive. |
#8
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The HD led flashes at a 4 HZ pace - why dies it ?
On 2/11/2014 3:21 PM, R.Wieser wrote:
Hello BillW50, First of all, how do you know this activity is preventing sleep? I don't. Other than that I do not hear anything spinning up or experience any delays when I use the computer after it being inactive for a period of time. Oh the deeper you dig, the more you find tons of things are still happening in the background. The mass majority of them were changes to the Windows registry. I could accept that when I'm working on the computer. But when it has been inactive for a period of 30+ minutes I would assume it has long since finished flushed all changes to the registry. I too thought that. But some things change like timers and such. I was shocked how much things get changed in the registry when the computer just sits there doing nothing. The only thing I can really think of is a misbehaving program somewhere. Although ... Most diskwrites/reads are buffered by the OS, so actual disk access should be minimal. But before going on a hunt for it I thought I would spare me some time and check here if it was a known issue. It looks like it isn't. Two huge things stop Windows from sleeping, that is keyboard access and mouse movement. The third thing is media players. Although some of them can toggle this feature on or off. Aside from the big three, anything else is a bit iffy. As a programmer can always keep the sleep timer from sleeping (it isn't hard). Although I would think even if you had a little bit of disk activity from another source, it probably isn't going to matter to the sleep timer. There is always the exception of course, but we can talk about that at another time. :-) -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v24.3.0 Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 7 Home SP1 |
#9
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The HD led flashes at a 4 HZ pace - why dies it ?
Hello Cash,
Are you allowing the hard drive to index all your files? Nope. and this can be stopped by unchecking the Allow Indexing Service.... box on the C drive. Another, arguably better way is to simply disable the service altogether (which than includes *all* drives on or attached to the 'puter, including removables like USB sticks) under administrative tools - services. :-) Thanks for the suggestion though. Regards, Rudy Wieser -- Origional message: Cash schreef in berichtnieuws ... R.Wieser wrote: Hello All, I've noticed a number of times that the HD-activity led of my XPsp3 computer flashes continuously in an about 4 HZ rhythm, and today I decided to ask: What is accessing my HD that way ? Is it really needed ? This way the HD will never go into its suspended/sleep mode. Regards, Rudy Wieser Are you allowing the hard drive to index all your files? If you are, then that *MAY* be your perceived problem - and this can be stopped by unchecking the Allow Indexing Service.... box on the C drive. |
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