Latitude E6420 - Problem with SSD, looking for some help.

Hello, i recently got a Dell Latitude E6420 about a week ago from today. It has Windows XP Pro, i5 2540m, Intel 3000 graphics only (not nvidia), and most importantly a Toshiba SSD which I will try to explain my problem with.
Since the original E6420 owners thread here, is locked/closed and i cant post there. This SSD is "Q Series Pro" i think (no programs like speedfan, hwInfo, or hardware monitor say that) but it is a 128 GB and model number "thnsnj128gcst"

The problem is related to the hard drive light on the laptop constantly showing activity nonstop forever at a very consistent "1 blink per 1 second" since it was installed with a perfectly clean installation of Win XP Pro SP3. I've been struggling for many hours everyday trying to track this impossible to find Drive Access. I have extremely high confidence it's not related to me using XP specifically (i'll explain in more detail why)

I have a Dell Latitude D620 laptop with a Samsung 850 Evo 120 GB SSD where this is not an issue whatsoever at all. (same XP setup) I've spent a very long while setting up this E6420 laptop exactly 100% identical to my D620. Disabling all the un-nessceassary services, turning off numerous options, and some registry keys to stop extra Drive Write's specifically for SSD's, etc etc until everything exactly matches my D620 setup.

The Samsung SSD on d620 has literally zero hard drive light activity when completely idle. But this is not the case with the Toshiba SSD on the E6420 and i can not for the love of god figure out why. I've very throughly tried a multitude of things, like disable the 2 network cards (lan and wireless) force exit all the services except those required for Windows to run, disabled all the card readers, turn off the wifi switch, bluetooth, camera, all of that. Just to test so there's virtually 0 IO anywhere.

Process Explorer, Hwinfo, both show no IO read/writes coming from any processes whatsoever, they are all 0.00% - But the stupid hard drive light is constantly blinking nonstop as i mentioned. I even throughly tested with "process monitor" program to find out if anything is wrong there, and there's nothing accessing the registry/system folders except about maybe once per 15 to 30 seconds, so that's not it.

I tested by logging off and sitting on the User Login screen, its still blinking away, -- i started a "check hard drive for errors" and it's even still doing 1 blink per 1 second while it says "windows scheduled check disk starting in 10 seconds" - And Safe Mode too, nothing ever stops it.

The SSD is properrly aligned as i confirmed with AS SSD Benchmark - it's set to 2 MB which i think is okay ??

It's extremely fustrating, because this is "not" a problem at all on my Latitude D620 with the Samsung SSD, and since the hardware is older and different. It uses IDE/ATA

I cant use the ATA option in the BIOS to boot with this E6420, as i got a BSOD at bootup, i only can use "raid on". I dont know if that's maybe why ?? Probably not, i wish i could test. I turned off "hard drive free fall protection" in BIOS, didn't make a difference either.
Is this specific Toshiba SSD flat out defective ??

I just seriously dont know but it's driving insane out of my mind. Any possible help from other E6420 owners ?? I apoligize I wrote too much, but i tried to be as thorough as possible to explain what I've tried.

 

Since i didnt get any reply here...i tried asking about this on MSFN forum, someone suggested to try removing the DVD / optical drive. And to my surprise, this was the problem. I never thought to try "that" specifically. For some weird reason the nonstop HD activity went away when i took out the DVD Drive. I put it back it, and then it started happening again.

So i just disabled that from Device Manager instead, and that worked too, to stop the activity. It's really weird. Someone also found an old post about this behavior from 2005, that seems to be specifically about the Dell brand in general.

https://www.dell.com/community/Stor...-Blinking-Hard-Disk-Light-SOLVED/td-p/1078513
Anyway i finally got this annoying problem fixed.