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Profile Siran d'Vel'nahr
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Message 1602209 - Posted: 18 Nov 2014, 16:35:10 UTC

Greetings everyone,

Here's the situation: 2 days ago I noticed that my HDD light was on continuously, without any of the normal disk access flickering. It was on solid. Yesterday morning I rebooted the PC and the light was acting like normal, flickering with disk access. After some time (not sure how long) I saw that the light was on solid again.

I used the Google machine and Googled "HDD light on solid", or some such search. I find all sorts of reasons why including the wires on the MB header being backwards. That I know is wrong, since LEDs only allow current to flow one direction. Wired wrong, no light, wired correct, light. I did stumble onto a reason stated by an HP tech on their forum. He stated that the SATA controller may be going wonky on the MB.

Has anyone ever heard of this being a case? And, if so, will there be any detrimental affects to my HDDs? I'm considering setting BOINC to NNT and shutting it down when my WUs are depleted. I would not want bogus results to be written to the database(s) here. So far everything seems to be ok except the light.

I've already priced a new MB, CPU and RAM on TigerDirect. My current MB and CPU are only 4 years old as of April this year.

Any thoughts or suggestions on this would be greatly appreciated. :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)
CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
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"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath
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Message 1602215 - Posted: 18 Nov 2014, 16:43:15 UTC

I have had that happen several times, and it was due to the hard drive overheating. In each case, I replaced the hard drive before it failed completely, and it fixed the problem.

I have also seen a virus/malware cause that problem.

Steve
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Message 1602224 - Posted: 18 Nov 2014, 16:58:58 UTC - in response to Message 1602215.  
Last modified: 18 Nov 2014, 17:07:18 UTC

I have had that happen several times, and it was due to the hard drive overheating. In each case, I replaced the hard drive before it failed completely, and it fixed the problem.

I have also seen a virus/malware cause that problem.

Steve

Hi Steve,

I ran WDs utility on both of my drives and they passed. I have read about the second suggestion about a virus/malware causing it. I ran Malwarebytes yesterday and it came up clean. I forgot that that was one of my "self-diagnostic" routines before I sought help using Google and coming here.

I do have a fan on each of my drives not to mention the other 8 fans I have running. The HDD fans are drawing cooler air coming into the case before it circulates through the case and is exhausted out the back and top.

I will see about checking if the HDDs are getting hot. Thanks Steve. :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

[edit]
I pulled both side covers and physically felt the drives and ruled out heat. They are both very cool to the touch. :) Back to the controller theory...
[/edit]
CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
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Message 1602231 - Posted: 18 Nov 2014, 17:07:55 UTC

My first thought would be to take note of what all might be going on in the PC (other apps and services running) in Task Manager. You can't always correlate, but a busy app might also mean busy disk i/o (but by all means not all the time).

Maybe antivirus definiation or Windows updates? Something to do with the Windows search/indexing function?

How much free memory in your PC? If you have a lot of memory in use, the system might be using drive for additional memory needs.

Hope this helps!

Pete
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Message 1602248 - Posted: 18 Nov 2014, 22:10:31 UTC - in response to Message 1602209.  

He stated that the SATA controller may be going wonky on the MB.

Has anyone ever heard of this being a case?

Not heard, but since the drive is OK according to the test you did and nothing is accessing the drive (in this case the LED would also not be permanently on, even on very high load there would be some short breaks every now and than), that's a very resonable explanation.



And, if so, will there be any detrimental affects to my HDDs? I'm considering setting BOINC to NNT and shutting it down when my WUs are depleted. I would not want bogus results to be written to the database(s) here. So far everything seems to be ok except the light.

I'd simply let it run for now and see what happens, if the WD test did not find any errors, than everything seems to work OK so far. For SETI it is very unlikely, that (in case that this actually leads to wrong results) someone else will get the result wrong in exactly the same way as you, so no problem at all.
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Message 1602249 - Posted: 18 Nov 2014, 22:11:52 UTC

I see that when Windows is trying to index a very large file, or my AV is trying to scan that same file.
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Message 1602282 - Posted: 18 Nov 2014, 22:59:32 UTC

Something else that can cause it is some file to do with media sharing. Start the task manager, and see what is pulling resources. Google that file, and it may shed some light on what program is accessing the drive. The media sharing file can be shut off. It won't affect most things, only media sharing streams.

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Message 1602285 - Posted: 18 Nov 2014, 23:07:25 UTC

Greetings Gents,

Thanks for all the responses.

@Pete: Yeah, I have accessed Task Manager several times looking for stuff and nothing seems out of order. My memory usage has never gone over 42%. At this moment it is at 36%.

Other: I have run Malwarebytes and checked fragmentation. No bad stuff and fragmentation is only at 0.21% since my last defrag. I'm just going to order a new ASUS MB and i7-4771 CPU. My current RAM is DDR3 which is recommended for that MB, it's just not as fast as the 1866 MHz they recommend. The only thing is I will have to re-install Windoze and applications and such, but that just goes without saying. It's probably time that drive gets a good cleaning anyway. ;)

Thanks again to all! :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)
CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath
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Message 1602289 - Posted: 18 Nov 2014, 23:14:15 UTC - in response to Message 1602282.  

Something else that can cause it is some file to do with media sharing. Start the task manager, and see what is pulling resources. Google that file, and it may shed some light on what program is accessing the drive. The media sharing file can be shut off. It won't affect most things, only media sharing streams.

Steve

Hi Steve,

I don't do media sharing, at least I don't think I am. ;) Nothing is hogging a lot of resources. I'm still leaning toward the controller getting wonky. The light is not showing any disk access. It is "burning bright" just as my power switch is, no winking, flickering or anything, just solid on.

Thanks Steve. :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)
CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath
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Message 1602296 - Posted: 18 Nov 2014, 23:24:31 UTC - in response to Message 1602289.  

Something else that can cause it is some file to do with media sharing. Start the task manager, and see what is pulling resources. Google that file, and it may shed some light on what program is accessing the drive. The media sharing file can be shut off. It won't affect most things, only media sharing streams.

Steve

Hi Steve,

I don't do media sharing, at least I don't think I am. ;) Nothing is hogging a lot of resources. I'm still leaning toward the controller getting wonky. The light is not showing any disk access. It is "burning bright" just as my power switch is, no winking, flickering or anything, just solid on.

Thanks Steve. :)

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

You don't have to do media sharing for that file to be active. It is running all the time, and does use a lot of resources. See the task manager, because I can't remember the name of the file. It runs as a service, and can be disabled.

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Message 1602301 - Posted: 18 Nov 2014, 23:28:04 UTC

You could download and run the process monitor from
Microsoft
to see what activity is occurring, and which process is doing it.
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Message 1602303 - Posted: 18 Nov 2014, 23:28:45 UTC - in response to Message 1602289.  

[I don't do media sharing, at least I don't think I am. ;) Nothing is hogging a lot of resources. I'm still leaning toward the controller getting wonky. The light is not showing any disk access. It is "burning bright" just as my power switch is, no winking, flickering or anything, just solid on.

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

It could just be the driver transistor/gate gone short-circuit and pulling the LED permanently on. I had something similar with one of my new Xeons lately, the front panel indicators showed that the RAID array was continually being rebuilt. After replacing the disks, and the motherboard, it finally went away when we wiggled the SAS disk cables, so we replaced them too. Should have traced it down from the schematics, but they don't seem to provide them these days -- it's just "keep replacing components until the problem goes away."
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Message 1602314 - Posted: 18 Nov 2014, 23:50:28 UTC

That can also happen if OS is looking for a file but can't find it, so check your event logs to see if that is the problem. ;-)

Cheers.
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Message 1602334 - Posted: 19 Nov 2014, 1:15:48 UTC

For Windows XP - most likely is slightly different for later windows versions

Go to Settings, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Event Viewer, System. Look through the list for any disk errors - tagged as an Error and in red I think.

Also, go to Control Panel, System, Hardware, Device Manager. Click on the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller. Go through the list of IDE channels checking the Advanced Settings. If any show running in PIO mode as opposed to DMA mode you need to correct that.

Search the Internet for how to fix it. It requires deleting some entries in the Registry if this is the issue.
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Message 1602367 - Posted: 19 Nov 2014, 3:19:23 UTC

The file name is wmpnetwk.exe. That is one possibility, and it can slow down a computer.

Here is a link on how to disable it.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/how-to-disable-windows-7-media-player-network-sharing-service-wmpnetwk/

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Message 1602377 - Posted: 19 Nov 2014, 3:34:52 UTC - in response to Message 1602209.  

The LED that you call "HDD light" is active also for DVD drive access.
So check do you have some old disk in the DVD drive.
Open/close the DVD drive.
Or disconnect DVD drive (and, if possible, other 'data' HDDs) to check which one causes this.
 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 
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Message 1602385 - Posted: 19 Nov 2014, 4:02:08 UTC - in response to Message 1602377.  

The LED that you call "HDD light" is active also for DVD drive access.
So check do you have some old disk in the DVD drive.
Open/close the DVD drive.
Or disconnect DVD drive (and, if possible, other 'data' HDDs) to check which one causes this.

I was just about to suggest optical drive, but you beat me to it.

The activity LED for disk activity is for everything on the controller. It doesn't mean the HDD is reading or writing, it simply means there is an I/O operation on the controller somewhere that is pending and has not been completed.

A few years ago, I used to have a lot of random, weird issues with my DVD burner being on the primary controller. For whatever reason, the nvidia drivers would constantly throw errors into the event log saying that the optical drive failed a parity check, and the driver that complained was a RAID driver... even though the controller was not even in RAID mode, and I never installed the RAID drivers for it.

That would cause my light to light up, and then would occasionally cause the controller to reset and my OS drive would power cycle and reset, almost always causing Windows to hang waiting for explorer.exe to respond, and then the whole system would eventually lock up.

Moved the DVD drive to the second controller on that board (not all boards have two separate controllers) and that problem was resolved.


So.. check your event logs. If nothing is there, unplug the optical drive and see if the problem goes away.
Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)
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Message 1602529 - Posted: 19 Nov 2014, 13:42:36 UTC

Greetings Gents,

Something new has come to my attention on this topic. More on that in a bit. First of all:

1. I don't do media sharing, the service is not running. Thanks Steve! :)
2. I have done tests and checked reports and nothing is jumping out saying "Hey there, I'm the culprit!"
3. I do not run any IDE/EIDE devices. My optical and HDDs are SATA. By the way, the only time there would be any HDD access with regards to the optical drive is if the optical drive is in use. My last backup was a couple weeks ago. I do not leave disks in the optical drive. Thanks BilBg and Cosmic_Ocean! :)

Here's the new thing:

My light is no longer on steady without any flickering. Why, you ask? Got me! But here's what happened. There was 1 Microsoft update this morning so I ran it. It required a re-boot (usually a single update does not, from my experience) so I re-booted. Voila! I'm now thinking that perhaps there was a problem with a previous Microsoft update and this single one fixed that. Possible?

Thanks for all the ideas guys, I'll let you know if this thing goes back to being lit solid or if this issue has been resolved.

Keep on BOINCing...! :)
CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath
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Message 1602533 - Posted: 19 Nov 2014, 14:04:23 UTC
Last modified: 19 Nov 2014, 14:21:40 UTC

On my shelf I am having an IDE DVD-ROM drive which is not working properly anymore.

However, if you boot up a system with this unit inserted and connected, should the light for it be visible for a shorter or longer time during the boot-up process?

That is before starting booting the operating system from the active hard disc.

What if you leave the unit physically connected and instead try disabling it by means of the built-in ROM-BIOS?

Should it still be lighting up when booting up your system?

Possibly you are not familiar about doing all these things.

The mechanisms or tools being used for SATA and IDE are very different when it comes to both the hardware as well as cabling. When these mechanisms become different, also the interface and the built-in BIOS for the unit becomes different as well. Still it needs to be able to communicate with the motherboard.

Read "principle" rather than mechanism. I was looking for the proper word here.

My experience is that it may well be lighting up, though not constantly, whether such a unit is functional or not.

It could well be hanging, either on or off and not be doing anything more.

Whether or not it is being accessed may possibly be determined by means of the read/write mechanism for the unit.

Both floppy discs and those not too commonly used anymore ZIP-drives or units are having slow access times and smaller capacities than modern hard disc drives. Before they got to 2-3 TB in size, possibly reducing disk access times somewhat, an average access time of less than 20 ms was quite typical.

So if a drive happens to be lighting up, it is not supposed or guaranteed to be functional or working. It rather becomes a question if the controller on the unit is working or not. Either a charge, maybe a static one, or possibly fluid may be to blame for such an error when it happens.

Another possibility is the usual wear and tear as a result of an ageing unit. They are not supposed to last forever.
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Message 1602534 - Posted: 19 Nov 2014, 14:11:55 UTC - in response to Message 1602529.  

Greetings Gents,

Something new has come to my attention on this topic. More on that in a bit. First of all:

1. I don't do media sharing, the service is not running. Thanks Steve! :)
2. I have done tests and checked reports and nothing is jumping out saying "Hey there, I'm the culprit!"
3. I do not run any IDE/EIDE devices. My optical and HDDs are SATA. By the way, the only time there would be any HDD access with regards to the optical drive is if the optical drive is in use. My last backup was a couple weeks ago. I do not leave disks in the optical drive. Thanks BilBg and Cosmic_Ocean! :)

Here's the new thing:

My light is no longer on steady without any flickering. Why, you ask? Got me! But here's what happened. There was 1 Microsoft update this morning so I ran it. It required a re-boot (usually a single update does not, from my experience) so I re-booted. Voila! I'm now thinking that perhaps there was a problem with a previous Microsoft update and this single one fixed that. Possible?

Thanks for all the ideas guys, I'll let you know if this thing goes back to being lit solid or if this issue has been resolved.

Keep on BOINCing...! :)



One of my business partners is VERY untechnical (and the business is of a technical type!). When a client calls in with an issue and the call gets to him, his first suggestion is always 'Have your tried rebooting your PC?'

;-)
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