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    Will your HDD status light blink with garbage collection?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by HTWingNut, Jul 23, 2011.

  1. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    Just curious if your hdd status light should blink when garbage collection is taking place? If I log out of Windows the status light will blink after several minutes of idle. Wondering if that's GC or something else is going on.
     
    HTWingNut, Jul 23, 2011
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  2. tilleroftheearth

    tilleroftheearth Wisdom listens quietly...

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    As GC is an internal process, it shouldn't.

    More than likely it's just Windows putting some things in order (now that it knows it's not likely to be interupted).
     
    tilleroftheearth, Jul 23, 2011
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  3. ramgen

    ramgen -- Morgan Stanley --

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    Not exactly sure what that light means. Does it show any activity or only the user activity? If it is the former it should light up during GC, if it is the latter it shouldn't.


    --
     
    ramgen, Jul 23, 2011
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  4. tilleroftheearth

    tilleroftheearth Wisdom listens quietly...

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    If I'm not mistaken; it shows O/S activity.
     
    tilleroftheearth, Jul 23, 2011
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  5. davepermen

    davepermen Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    yes. os known disc activity. depends a bit on all drivers and firmwares, it could report gc. but definitely not with default drivers, and most likely not with others.

    i remember having had a raid setup on a server not resulting in visible disc activity ever at first. once we updated all sort of drivers, activity started to show up. so it only blinks if the os is aware of it. which by default, it isn't for gc.

    most likely after a while, it's a) superfetch re-preparing itself or b) Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
     
    davepermen, Jul 26, 2011
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