Hard drive led showing constant activity when not in use
 

Hello everyone,

I recently bought a new harddrive for my laptop and most things seem to working just fine. However, when the laptop is just sitting there doing nothing (even at the login-screen), the led showing hard drive activity is glowing constantly. When doing something requiring the hard drive to work, it begins to flicker as it should, but when it's done the led stops flickering for a moment, then begins to glow constantly again. I've tried reformating both the old drive and the new drive in order for them to be exactly the same software-wise (I'm running Ubuntu 6.06) , but the new drive is still showing the same symptoms.

The old drive is a "Hitachi Travelstar 20GB 4200rpm ata" whereas the new drive is a "Seagate Momentus 60GB 5400rpm ata"...

I would greatly appreciate any advice you might have for me.

id check to see if there truly is ANY activity on the disk when the light is solid.

Then i'd find some disk activity light software application on the net and see if it replicates what the light on the laptop is doing.

If it doesn't replicate the problem then i'd say there is a problem with the drive, albeit not a major problem.

Does it happen with the old drive? Like if you pop the old drive back in temporarily does it do it now with that one too?

Scott

The old hard drive with the exact same software on it (both newly formatted with Ubuntu 6.06 standard install) doesn't show the same symptoms. I can't really see what would make this new drive have a solid glow while the old one does'nt have one... Could this be a brand-issue? (Like the laptop not being able to use Seagate drives properly?) I know that sounds like a long shot, so my guess would probably be that there is something wrong with the drive... Any thoughts on that? Thanks for taking your time to answer btw :)

Well, use some little program to see drive activity... like a virtual activity lights program or gkrellm.

I highly doubt that there is any activity on the drive if the system runs smoothly while the light is pegged solid.

My educated guess would be the drive is bad.

Scott

gkrellm mostly says "0" in the box showing hdd activity with some disk usage now and then while the led glows constantly. Even though there is a few signs of usage, shouldnt the "disk-watcher" show loads of activity if the led was truly meant to be shining solid? (If the disk was okey that is...). Anyway, thanks again for replying :)

Theres a problem with the drive then. Image your partitions with partimage and return the drive for another.

Scott

Thanks alot for walking me through this, you have been very helpful indeed :)

I certainly don't mean to hijack this thread and flare up one of my old threads where I described the exact same problem but why is the possibility that certain Linux distros falsely report HD activity such a foreign idea?

My HD LED reacts perfectly normal at POST and boot but is constantly lit once in Linux. I did a Maxtor HD check from a floppy outside any OS and it reports the HD is fine. Also, Windows does not show any anomaly.

cheers

Update: Since i got so much help I feel I have to follow up on this problem. I had the original drive replaced by another, it showed the same symptoms. By this point I thought the chance of the error being caused by a faulty drive was second to none, so i had the old drive (SEAGATE MOMENTUS 5400.2 60GB 5400RPM 2.5# ATA/100) replaced for another drive - a HITACHI TRAVELSTAR 5K100 60GB 2.5# 5400RPM ATA/100. This time it worked flawlessly :D... So I guess it was a compatibility problem all along, anyway, now that it works I'm happy, i thank ScottReed once more for helping me out :)

This might be a good pointer for any one else who is planning on upgrading the hard drive in a Thinkpad R40.