Hard drive light stays on

My hard drive light is stuck on. It's not grinding as far as I can tell.
It's not the OS; it will stay stuck on if I go into the BIOS. It turned off
after a couple hours after boot a few days ago, but now it just stays on and
I never see it blink. My performance seems to not suffer, but it worries me.

I don't think it's a cable issue, it worked normally and didn't start
staying solidly on until I threw in another (old) hard drive, but I pulled
that other hard drive out and the hard drive light was still stuck on, so I
put the other hard drive back in.

Any ideas?

Jon

... here's my config..

Both drives are Western Digital Caviars, I think. The main drive is SATA
320 GB, the other (old) drive is IDE 120 GB. Both pass the Western Digital
tests and SMART tests. The old drive does make a single loud click and a
power-down sound every few hours, but I can still access it when it happens
without hiccups or errors.

Motherboard is an MSI K8N Neo4 w/ an Athlon 64 3000+ and 1GB dual channel
DDR RAM.

Jon

Alas, if you'd only mentioned your operating system. If it's Windows, I
suspect that there's something running. Do an Alt + Cntrl + Delete and
check out the programs and processes that are running. Try shutting down
some of the processes.

Jon Davis wrote:
My hard drive light is stuck on. It's not grinding as far as I can tell.
It's not the OS; it will stay stuck on if I go into the BIOS. It turned off
after a couple hours after boot a few days ago, but now it just stays on and
I never see it blink. My performance seems to not suffer, but it worries me.

I don't think it's a cable issue, it worked normally and didn't start
staying solidly on until I threw in another (old) hard drive, but I pulled
that other hard drive out and the hard drive light was still stuck on, so I
put the other hard drive back in.

Any ideas?

Jon

On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 01:02:58 -0700, Jon Davis thoughtfully wrote:

.. here's my config..

Both drives are Western Digital Caviars, I think. The main drive is SATA
320 GB, the other (old) drive is IDE 120 GB. Both pass the Western Digital
tests and SMART tests. The old drive does make a single loud click and a
power-down sound every few hours, but I can still access it when it
happens without hiccups or errors.

Motherboard is an MSI K8N Neo4 w/ an Athlon 64 3000+ and 1GB dual channel
DDR RAM.

Jon

Two things wiring issue with the led, defrag issue with the HD.
You could go to safe mode Win and defrag, which also reorgs the registry
file. WD and Smart say the HDs are physically ok but filesystem may be
swapping pages.

proper drivers are installed for HD controllers?
DMA is enabled (9xwin)?
indexing turned off (find fast -MS office)?
media sniffers?
virtual memory settings are correct?

"Jon Davis" wrote in message
news:K6s_e.27525$UI.20713@okepread05...
.. here's my config..

Both drives are Western Digital Caviars, I think. The main drive is SATA
320 GB, the other (old) drive is IDE 120 GB. Both pass the Western Digital
tests and SMART tests. The old drive does make a single loud click and a
power-down sound every few hours, but I can still access it when it
happens without hiccups or errors.

Motherboard is an MSI K8N Neo4 w/ an Athlon 64 3000+ and 1GB dual channel
DDR RAM.

Jon

I've the same symptoms here for the past year or so & it only happened since
I put an internal zip100 in the other floppy slot & have now got all IDE
positions filled. Apparently it's quite common after installing internal
Zip100.
I just removed the wires from the motherboard.......... no dramas.


"Don B" wrote in message
news
Alas, if you'd only mentioned your operating system. If it's Windows, I
suspect that there's something running. Do an Alt + Cntrl + Delete and
check out the programs and processes that are running. Try shutting down
some of the processes.

Jon Davis wrote:
My hard drive light is stuck on. It's not grinding as far as I can tell.
It's not the OS; it will stay stuck on if I go into the BIOS. It turned
off after a couple hours after boot a few days ago, but now it just stays
on and I never see it blink. My performance seems to not suffer, but it
worries me.

I don't think it's a cable issue, it worked normally and didn't start
staying solidly on until I threw in another (old) hard drive, but I
pulled that other hard drive out and the hard drive light was still stuck
on, so I put the other hard drive back in.

Any ideas?

Jon

"jaster" wrote in message
.. .
Two things wiring issue with the led, defrag issue with the HD.

Nope, was working normally before, like I said.

You could go to safe mode Win and defrag, which also reorgs the registry
file.

Nope, stays on even when browsing BIOS settings, like I said.

Jon

"JAD" wrote in message
news
proper drivers are installed for HD controllers?

Nope, stays on even when browsing BIOS settings, and worked normally before,
all like I said.

Jon

"Don B" wrote in message
news
Alas, if you'd only mentioned your operating system.

Nope, stays on even when browsing the BIOS settings, like I said.

Jon

Incidentally, I've defragged this drive to hell and back, even used BootVis
to optimize.

I'm talking days.. like, weeks, solidly on, with tons of hardware RAM to
spare. This is NO visible performance hit, all like I said.

Is there anyone out there who reads this stuff? If I say "it's solidly on
when I go into my BIOS", people tell me to look at my operating system, and
I say "it's not wiring because it worked normally before, until I added
another drive," and people tell me it's a wiring problem. Oh my god.

I think my drive is just toast, because one would think someone out there
who knows how to read and who has seen this problem before (apparently a
rare combination) would be able to point me in a meaningful direction
without wasting my time, and theirs for bothering to repeat that which I
already eliminated.

Jon