Dell Studio 15 continuous hard drive activity

Hello,

I own a Dell Studio 15 and I saw that the hard drive led keeps blinking at about 1 blink / second even when the computer is absolutely doing nothing.

Also I can hear some noise (I suppose it is the hard disk moving) from about 50 cm distance from the laptop.

This happens with Vista, XP, Linux (I tried some distribution: Mandriva, X/K/Ubuntu, PcLinux, Mint...)

Has anybody experienced this strange behaviour on his laptop ?

Thank you

Bye

 

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1414

The Best solution till now - Disable AHCI in BIOS and reinstall Windows!
The HDD will be little slower but It works fine for me!

Other Solution - you can put your hard disk on Maximum Performance (254) with programs like NHC, but It will cause very HOT HDD (39-40 C )
Normal HDD temperature is from 30 C to 40-41 C; very often 35-37 C

 

Which hard drive do you have? Some are louder than others. I can't hear my hard drive nor is there ever that much activity on it.

 

Thank you, I tryed the update but it seems the hard disk is already up to date. The AHCI in BIOS is disabled already, because that way I could install XP without problems. So, now I am trying the last option: Maximum performance. Anyway I can still see the led blinking (and hear the hd noise) with the same frequence. I hope all this extra activity will not damage the hard drive

 

It' s a Western Digital (WD2500BEVS-7) 250 GB 5400 rpm

If you leave your laptop idle the hd led will be continuosly off or you can see blinking the same ?

In my laptop this blinking never stops, even after the laptop is idle for more than 5 hours it keeps on.

In the silence of the night the rhythmic noise of the hard disk gives me the sensation that inside the laptop there is a clock running countdown before hd explosion

 

It will blink even idle because the system is still running and stuff is being transferred to an from the hard drive.

 

No it will not damage your HDD....or not so fast, may be after year or two....
I hope WD will update their firmware and Our Hard Drivers will be complete OK!
Anyway

This must solve your problem:
http://www.gottabemobile.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=6870
Use HDparm to set your HDD to maximum performance (254)

 

Hello,

unluckly also this didn't solve the problem.

I contacted Dell assistance to ask if there is some driver to download but they don't have any. By the way, I also took the chance to ask about cracking sounds I hear in Vista and XP (and not in Linux), and even after installing their website driver I can still hear cracks, expecially while watching flash movies.

For what about the hd, they asked me to run a test for the hd (from the drivers cd) and in case of error contact them again. The long test (nearly 4 hours) was ok, so at least I know that hd is ok.

At this point, I also hope WD will update the firmware and solve the problem

 

I hope so my friend,, - for both HDD and "Crackling"

 

I have a similar problem with my new Studio 17 after a reboot there will be constant hdd activity for 10 15 minutes. Then it stops, but the hdd indicator the cylinder looking icon will blink about 1 per second

 

This may also be an old throwback from CD auto insert detection.

the machine is checking the CD drive once a second to see if a new media has been inserted, at which point it will spin up the disc and read the contents, and display the "what do you wanna do with this disk" style prompt.

I'm sure the flashing on XP machines could be elimated by turning off auto insert notification. I've not tried it on the studio 15, as it doesnt bother me.

That indicator is a sata activity indicator. Although we all recognise it as the hdd indicator, it will light up whenever there is activity or access to either sata device

 

I have noticed the same constant drive activity on my new Latitude E6500 with the ST9250421ASG 250GB drive so this doesn't seem to be related to the brand of drive. I've had my laptop sitting idle (zero activity) next to me while I work on my old laptop and it never stops.

To make matters worse, when power settings turn off the drive it locks up XP so I had to disable the HD power settings.

 

in vista disable super fetch. and auto indexing, and auto backup.

now my hdd light stays off period until I do something.

 

I'm running 64-bit XP and have disabled indexing, restore, etc and have also disabled every hardware device that I won't use regularly. Still no luck. If I come up with the majic bullet, I'll post it.

 

are you running an antivirus?