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06-15-2006, 10:12 AM
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#1
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Member
Registered: Jun 2006
Distribution: Ubuntu 7.10, Mandriva 2008
Posts: 40
Rep:
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HD LED permanently lit
My hard drive seems to be permanently running, at least from what the LED shows. It never flashes but it's permanently lit. I know it's not a hardware issue since it's fine in 'MS Gates'.
any thoughts?
much appreciated 
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06-15-2006, 11:19 AM
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#2
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Member
Registered: Jan 2005
Location: Nice, France
Distribution: Ubuntu,RHES, Mandriva, RHAS, AIX 4.3.3, 5.2 & 5.3, Debian,Solaris8/10
Posts: 119
Rep:
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What type of HD do use ??
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06-15-2006, 03:35 PM
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#3
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Member
Registered: Jun 2006
Distribution: Ubuntu 7.10, Mandriva 2008
Posts: 40
Original Poster
Rep:
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hi there.
this is weird. I have my config in the signature but I can't see it anymore. What happened to the signatures?
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06-15-2006, 11:31 PM
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#4
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LQ Guru
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 6,042
Rep: 
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Upgrade the BIOS. I have seen more ASUS motherboards do this than other brands. If that does not work, give a good whack to the computer case. It should knock the heads in place. However, it may be a good time to find a replacement hard drive.
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06-16-2006, 07:20 AM
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#5
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Member
Registered: Jun 2006
Distribution: Ubuntu 7.10, Mandriva 2008
Posts: 40
Original Poster
Rep:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Electro
Upgrade the BIOS. I have seen more ASUS motherboards do this than other brands.
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As I said, the HD is behaving normally in Windoze.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Electro
If that does not work, give a good whack to the computer case. It should knock the heads in place. However, it may be a good time to find a replacement hard drive.
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Now that hint is exactly what I needed. Thanks a lot...
**************************************************************
Anyway back to the question: could it have something to do with a process which is permanently running off the HD and not resident in the RAM? Is there a way to figure out which processes are loaded into the memory and which are running off the HD?
cheers
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06-16-2006, 07:39 PM
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#6
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LQ Veteran
Registered: Mar 2003
Location: Boise, ID
Distribution: Mint
Posts: 6,642
Rep:
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It could simply be that the hard drive LED is (incorrectly) connected to a different pin, such as the one for power.
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06-17-2006, 03:51 AM
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#7
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Member
Registered: Jun 2006
Distribution: Ubuntu 7.10, Mandriva 2008
Posts: 40
Original Poster
Rep:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by J.W.
It could simply be that the hard drive LED is (incorrectly) connected to a different pin, such as the one for power.
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cheers for the reply.
Does that mean Linux reads the pin connections on the mobo in a different way than Windows?
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06-17-2006, 12:37 PM
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#8
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LQ Veteran
Registered: Mar 2003
Location: Boise, ID
Distribution: Mint
Posts: 6,642
Rep:
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No, the functions of the mobo's pins are controlled by the mobo's wiring/circuitry, not the OS.
I once had a similar problem, where the hard drive LED was on all the time but the power LED was always off, and the cause was simply that I had not connected the appropriate wire to the correct pin, hence my earlier post.
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06-17-2006, 01:00 PM
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#9
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Senior Member
Registered: Nov 2003
Location: Knoxville, TN
Distribution: Kubuntu 9.04
Posts: 1,168
Rep:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ColonelPanic
I know it's not a hardware issue since it's fine in 'MS Gates'.
any thoughts?
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I don't think you can deduce any such thing from the available evidence. In fact, I bet it probably is hardware related. There's probably something buggy about the controller that the Windows driver has been patched to fix but for which the generic Linux driver has no idea. Sometimes the hardware manufacturers do this themselves and the problem even shows up installing an off-the-shelf/retail copy of Windows.
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06-19-2006, 04:05 AM
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#10
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Member
Registered: Jun 2006
Distribution: Ubuntu 7.10, Mandriva 2008
Posts: 40
Original Poster
Rep:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crito
I don't think you can deduce any such thing from the available evidence. In fact, I bet it probably is hardware related. There's probably something buggy about the controller that the Windows driver has been patched to fix but for which the generic Linux driver has no idea. Sometimes the hardware manufacturers do this themselves and the problem even shows up installing an off-the-shelf/retail copy of Windows.
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After double-checking I see that the LED is flashing correctly also at post and during boot. It only goes into permanent lit once Linux is up. Hence my reluctancy to believe this is a hardware issue.
Although it doesn't seem to be a problem, I am still curious what the reason could be.
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06-19-2006, 04:57 AM
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#11
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LQ Guru
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 6,042
Rep: 
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Probably cron is running updatedb which updates the locate datebase file. Use ps or top to check if this is true.
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07-03-2006, 10:11 AM
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#12
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Member
Registered: Jun 2006
Distribution: Ubuntu 7.10, Mandriva 2008
Posts: 40
Original Poster
Rep:
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For those interested, I just made a test install with kernel 2.6.17 and the LED issue is gone. It behaves normally as opposed to 2.6.12.
Any thoughts?
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07-03-2006, 03:08 PM
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#13
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LQ Newbie
Registered: Dec 2004
Distribution: Mandrake, maybe Ubuntu if I can ever get it to install
Posts: 8
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If you are running KDE and KDE is running kat, and you have alot of stuff on your HD, it will do that. Kat indexes files for fast searching and does it all the time. You can right click on the kat icon on your toolbar and either turn it off, or change what directories it indexes. In my case, it was indexing all the crap I have on my windows partitions, and would run forever. I configured cat to only index /home in linux and the problem went away.
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