Sony SR Hard Disk Indicator

I just noticed that my hdd indicator keeps flashing, even though my laptop is completely idle, no app running, nothing. why is the hdd being accessed non-stop? i checked that windows is not updating either and i switched off internet, still blinking.

can anyone help?

 

anyone else getting this blinking issue? i have read that this is a common issue with vista, but wondering if anyone else has this problem? the led light keeps blinking every sec, even when the laptop is idle.

 

vista is most likely doing things behind the scenes with your HDD to allow creating restore points.

 

i have disabled system restore and indexing. i also tried disabling superfetch but it didn't help so i turned it back on.

if it keeps doing this, the hdd can never go to sleep and therefore drains the battery non-stop.

when i tried diskmon, there is constant disk activity although i have no idea what or why.

 

doesnt that indicator constantly flash on all other computers too? i could be wrong but whenever i look at that indicator on other computers it is always blinking when the computer is on...

 

does yours do too? i just want to be sure. i don't remember it having so much activity when i was on xp (this is my first time using vista). i have read some articles about "vista disk thrashing" so apparently it's a vista issue but articles said that the thrashing would stop if i disable superfetch, indexing, win defender and defrag task. i have tried doing that but the thrashing continues.

this cannot be good for battery life because it is keep the hdd alive every second. i would imagine it will hurt the hdd in the long term as well?

 

ok i just went back to my old xp laptop and ran diskmon it does read/write constantly as well. what is different comes down to the indicator, my old laptop did not flash the light if the read/write amount is small; it will only flash if the read/write amount is significant. this sony flashes it all the time even when 4 bytes are read/write. i guess not really an issue at this time but still an eye sore to see the led blinking all the time...

 

Sure it will decrease the battery life but there's no way the HDD can be damaged by it being read.

There are a lot of possible causes for your problem from malware, virus or programs running updates.

A good starting point would be to check if your computer is free of virus or any spyware.

On the other side, if the constant reading does not affect your notebook's performance I would not be worried at all; by performance I mean slowing down the computer.

Good Luck,
Shoryu

 

Hey try disabling these and see if it helps

Disable Volume Shadow Copy (Volume Snapshot Service or VSS) and Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider service

Disable scheduled disk defragmentation for all drives

Disable Windows Search service

Disable Terminal Services and Terminal Services Configuration

Disable RDP

 

Windows Search I have it disabled

Those other three services are on Manual and are not started so I don't think they are working at all.

Disk defrag task has been turned off.

Blinking continues but I think it is just an OS thing, somehow it keeps reading/writing some bytes (4 to 16 bytes) and the LED indicator is picking it up sensitively (if only there is a way to adjust the sensitivity).

 

Well mine's doesn't keep blinking...

Weird

Maybe try disabling superfetch?

 

i did try disabling superfetch and it didn't help. i don't even have antivirus on. even completely idling, the blinking continues and if i run diskmon, it will verify that there are indeed disk read/write, mostly (4-16 bytes), every now and then (every second).

 

Go to Task Manager -> Performance and then click on Resource Monitor -> and then expand the Disk column.. and see what is using your disk nonstop

 

ok i did that and it is apparently svchost. There are some prefetch entries but not much.

there is one particular entry that keeps showing up:
C:\Windows\ServiceProfilers\LocalService\AppData\Local\lastalive1.dat

any idea what is that?

there is also periodical System logging - NTFS Master File Table and NTFS Volume Log
C:\$Mft
C:\$Logfile

But what is strange is even if the monitor shows nothing, the indicator continues to blink once per sec (as if to tell me it's alive).

 

Use google to search for lastalive1.dat and you might find some help

i found this when i searched
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2669520&SiteID=17

 

okay i set the TimeStampInterval to zero and will see what happens...

now i just rebooted and i noticed something in the resource monitor - seems like svchost.exe is scanning through ALL my files! i don't have defender enabled (i used to, but to track down the disk access issue i have disabled it). why is the scanning taking place, presumable at startup?

 

Maybe it's enabled again??
i think if the hard drive is not spinning really fast and is not really making a lot of noise.. just occasional reading and writing then i think it's normal...

omg I'm confused too
sorry dude i tried to help

 

thanks, i know...

i think it's a windows os thing.

a search on the net shows i am not alone...
http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=2072&PN=3

 

i guess keep seaching "hard drive light keeps blinking" or something like that on google and see if people have a solution to it

 

thanks! that is a good search phrase and i finally reduced the blinking. the led blinking was due to a few things but the "fake" reports were due to the dvd-drive polling. i powered off the dvd drive and now the "every-second-blinking" has stopped. it now blinks every few seconds, better now because at least it's not that disturbing...

 

Yay, i'm glad you found a fix!

 

too bad i can't rep you another time

another good thing i found is i can set the optical drive to "auto-off" under vaio power management tab in the power settings. so it automatically power off if there is no usage.

 

no problem

yep, that is very handy, i set the optical drive, card reader, iee1394 port, and the modem (i have no idea why sony included a modem...) to auto off when i'm using the battery.
i'm also using Vista Battery Saver, it automatically turns off Aero and the Sidebar when using battery, very useful.

 

What happened with me, is i set indexing to manual, not disabled, and it would just turn on sometimes. Things like that, or windows update make the hardrive indicator go nuts. So disable those two things and just manually do windows update when you'd like. Also, if you dont uninstall some of the crazy sony media software, it scans your hardisk FOREVER to "analyze" your music, also effectively making your HD go nutty.

so make sure windows search, all indexing(hardisk and vista) is off, and stuff. Also, WindowsLiveOne may try to automate backup of your drive, which would also do that. The problem is, you cant see those tasks/operatiosn in task manager correctly, hence not knowing it was going on until you actually open the programs(except in windows updates case....where you have no clue until u disable it).

Don't turn off Aero, Vista is ugly without it, lol. I do close sidebar, as it takes up like 2-3 processes and some ram 200-300 mb of ram.

With sidebar closed, plus stuff disabled im only using 600mb of ram in idle. With my CPU usage at 0%-1%. It took me some tweaking and figuring out what was making my HD go nutty to have these settings. I didn't disable aero, and the system is silky smooth fast now! Just how its meant to be

 

My mothers Medion laptop did something similar in XP, working on the HDD constantly after something went wrong with an O&O defragmentation...

Wise Registry cleaner solved the issue. (Luck!!)

It could be some messed up registry entry.