Disk Activity Light?

I'm a recent convert to the Mac world. One thing that I've become accustomed to is watching the little flckering light that indicated when Windows was accessing the disk, whether it be to load an application, access disk cache, or paging to disk.
Obviously this is trivial but PowerBooks don't have anything that indicates disk activity other than the Activity Monitor. My question is: Is there a small utility that sits in finder or the menu bar that would simulate a disk activity light?
Thanks in advance.

Hi Joe,
You could try XRG, but why not keeping Activity Monitor in the Dock, and in the Login Items, and choose Dock Icon > Show Disk Activity ?
HTH
Axl

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X1 Carbon hard disk activity light

To save weight or whatever the Lenovo engineers decided to ommit a harddisk (SSD) activity light. As background applications might do a lot of mass storage work it would be helpful to find out if a slow laptop is due to exactly that.
There is a solution! Activity Indicator will show a non intrusive indicator on the system bar. You can download it here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/activityindicat/

ColonelONeill wrote:
Plenty of solutions.
I agree. But Activity Indicator is a very light weight app that does just one thing and does it well.
I've been using it for several years now on a couple of ThinkPads that I manage remotely when I'm travelling. Even though those ThinkPads do have HDD activity LEDs it's a bit hard to see them across the Atlantic
Cheers... Dorian Hausman
X1C2, TPT2, T430s, SL500, X61s, T60p, A21p, 770, 760ED... 5160, 5150... S360/30

T430s - Disk-activity and wireless indicator lights not working

Just noticed that the indicator lights on the T430s are not working. There is a wireless and a disk activity light that are not lit up or blinks during activity. Located just left of the T430s sign on the lower half of the laptop cover.

Hello:
That is a new one on me!
Try trashing a couple of preference files and then restarting:
com.apple.dock.plist
com.apple.dock.db
Barry

Blue Fibre Lights Pegged Until Disk Activity .....

setup:
G5 Xserve 10.3.9
Xserve RAID, 7mods. - 4mods. [arrays]
The 7 module RAID 5 array fibre/disk activity lights in the center of the RAID (front) are continually spiking and causing massive network slow downs! I have updated the Firmware for Both the Xserve and RAID and it just won't stop. This has happened before and a reboot of the RAID itself has fixed it. I have rebooted both the Xserve and RAID at least twice now. I am sure that the updates are current as well as I have just finished doing them....
I am thinking that a module has snapped, died, or is playing dead, but the RAID Admin is showing me nothing bad....
Anyone Out There That Can Give Swift Help???????

This can happen in a protected RAID set (i.e. RAID 5) if a single raid member drive pops offline and back on again, since the RAID set has to re-build itself from the parity data in that case.
It also happens after creating a RAID 5 volume, as the creation usually takes a few days (assuming you used the 'RAID Now' option), and so you'll see the blue lights.
It also makes sense that the blue light 'spiking' would drop when you do a read/write, as the initialization process has to pause to handle the disk activity.
Are either of these the case?
We are having some issues with an Xserve RAID
connected to a G5 Xserve running 10.4.8 Server. The
Fibre Channel lights on the front are constantly
maxed out, but whenever the disk are active the
lights die down only to peg again when activity
stops. Needless to say, we are having SEVERE access
speed issues. Any ideas?
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

HDD Red activity light is on constantly---

Why when I run arch is the HDD red disk activity light always on.
Is it an arch thing or is the drive failing or what.
Does not look good.
Regards
El Zorro
Last edited by elzorro (2012-01-17 07:01:05)

elzorro wrote:...both strigi and nepomuk were indexing so I disabled them both, hopefully this is OK,... Guess that furious indexing that seemed not to stop could overwork the drive and make it fail early.
Personally, I don't often have the need to find a file by it's contents, so I turn off Stirgi. I leave Nepomuk on. If you do nothing and leave them both on, the system should finsh indexing -- eventually My home directory has a lot of source files, including the source for the kernel. Indexing all that takes about a day. If you turn on Strigi, you can use the advanced settings to limit its search to specific directories. You can also filter by file type. I am always hit by the known bug in which indexing gets hung up in certain pdf files and runs one of my CPUs up to 100% until I kill it.
Disk drives are pretty reliable, I don't worry (much) about excess disk activity being a serious risk to the drive. I do dislike serious disk activity because it impacts the responsiveness of my system and because it has a serious impact on power consumption (usually because there is some code actively running that needs to be fed data by that disk activity).

What happened to the Disk Activity indicator?

I'm a computer professional, and have had at least six Toshiba laptops in the past 15 years.I have always bought Toshiba for myself and reccomend them to my clients.
I noticed an important ommission in the most recent machine purchased for my own use. It's a Satellite S855, and it has no disk activity light.
Whose idea was it to omit this tiny, inexpensive and most useful item? It can't have been omitted because of cost! In a production run how much is saved per unit by omitting this device, five cents? I doubt that it even costs that much. What ever the price, I'd gladly pay the additional cost for something so useful to observing how the computer is running and whether it may be busy, overwhelmed or just frozen.
Please talk to the design group and tell them that we want our disk led back!
Sincerely,
Satellite S855-S5378
Satellite ProL550-EZ1702
Satellite P105-S6197
history of 4 other Satellites

Thought I'd add that a folder on the desktop with the following name will contain all applications (including metro apps). AnyName might be Applications.
AnyName.{4234d49b-0245-4df3-b780-3893943456e1}
And a folder with this name will contain all the settings in Control Panel. AnyName might be MasterControl. Some name it GodMode.
AnyName.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
-Jerry

HD Activity Light---Doesn't!

Noticed in the last week or so that my HD activity light does not glow when there is obvious HD activity--boot-up, using Windows Explorer, etc.. The light is OK, as it glows just briefly at boot time. AND, I hooked it to the 2-pin output on JPF1 for the power LED, and it glows brightly and steadily.
Only change to config was about a month ago, when I added the Kingwin Removable disc tray. I specifically watched, and could see, the HD activity light when I inserted the tray with the 80GB WD drive, and did a backup. BOTH the main HD light, and the light on the Kingwin would flash, indicating activity on the two drives. Then, within the last week or so, I noticed the main HD light doesn't flash with disc activity (the Kingwin still does, when I have that drive inserted and in use).
Checked connections to JPF1--even reversed the connector to be sure the polarity was right. Still, no joy.
Any ideas? The only thing I HAVEN'T done is a CMOS-clear. Think that might help?
Many thanks.
Stahlwird

Quote from: Fredrik Åsenius on 01-August-07, 07:07:02
I know what I would do! I would choose either.
Good of MSI to offer you help!
Hm, the answer bugs me a little: "trace" is a small wire of a kind, isn't it, and how can a powered wire repeatedly light a diod for a fraction of a second and then become dark? Could it maybe be a short? It would make more sense if the pin wasn't fully fastened, but then LED should light when pushing the connection manually.
A "trace" is actually a very thin, narrow strip of copper on a printed circuit board, left after the etching process, which takes the place of wires that were used in the old discrete component days. If a board is stressed (moved, flexed, or other action) a trace can break which, of course, breaks the electrical connection. Such a break can even be temperature-sensitive, causing an intermittent interruption of the electrical connection when a particular temperature is reached. (One poster suggested an intermittent wire, as a matter of fact.)
I have worked with computers (main frames) most of my life, and I can remember one instance where a printed circuit board would fail at certain times but not others. The engineer finally discovered that the board failed in a fairly narrow temperature range. Then another case happened where there were two identical computers side-by-side in an installation. A particular program could be run on both computers, and one would fail while the other would not. The engineer and I nailed it down to a specific section of code, including a "divide" command that appeared to be the culprit. When we "single-stepped" the computer through that code, and the divide command, it worked, and continued to work after that. Seems single-stepping may have forced current to flow through the particular piece of circuitry that performed the divide, either slower or longer than when the program ran at normal speed. It almost appeared as if the enhanced flow of current "welded" something something that was previously intermittent. Weird, but true!
I understand what many of you are saying, that the failure of this light is a small thing, when the mobo works in every other way. But, I gotta tell you, that hard disk activity light is a great diagnostic tool when a system, or program is behaving erratically. I really want it to work properly. So, I am willing to spend the money to send the mobo to MSI, since they will repair or replace it. They do return replacements at their expense, however.
And, Fredrik: you are probably right that few might be interested in continuing this thread. Can't argue with you! I originally posted it hoping others might have suggestions, or similar experiences. Now, I continue posting to document the progress. I'll bring this to a close with a final post when I receive my replacement mobo.
S.

Xserve RAID Fibre Channel Lights pegged until disk activity

We are having some issues with an Xserve RAID connected to a G5 Xserve running 10.4.8 Server. The Fibre Channel lights on the front are constantly maxed out, but whenever the disk are active the lights die down only to peg again when activity stops. Needless to say, we are having SEVERE access speed issues. Any ideas?

This can happen in a protected RAID set (i.e. RAID 5) if a single raid member drive pops offline and back on again, since the RAID set has to re-build itself from the parity data in that case.
It also happens after creating a RAID 5 volume, as the creation usually takes a few days (assuming you used the 'RAID Now' option), and so you'll see the blue lights.
It also makes sense that the blue light 'spiking' would drop when you do a read/write, as the initialization process has to pause to handle the disk activity.
Are either of these the case?
We are having some issues with an Xserve RAID
connected to a G5 Xserve running 10.4.8 Server. The
Fibre Channel lights on the front are constantly
maxed out, but whenever the disk are active the
lights die down only to peg again when activity
stops. Needless to say, we are having SEVERE access
speed issues. Any ideas?
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Disk activity led

Is it normal that the disk activity led on the right side of my notebook (a lenovo 3000 N500 4233-5MG)
is blinking regularly even if there is no disk activity ?
I have installed a dual boot system with both Windows XP and Solaris 10 but I observed that there is no difference,
the led is always blinking.

Hi @Working_Stiffie
Welcome to the HP Forums!
It is a superb place to find answers and ideas!
For you to have the best experience in the HP forum I would like to direct your attention to the HP Forums Guide Learn How to Post and More
I see you recently had the power connector cable replaced and now the LEDS in the lower left do not light up. You are uncomfortable disassembling the notebook. It is most likely a loose or not connected cable as you said. As you just had it repaired I would take it back to the repair shop and advise him of the situation. He should be able to correct it for you.
Here is a link to HP G50 Notebook PC and Compaq Presario CQ50 Notebook PC Maintenance and Service Guide that will go over removal procedures if you would like to attempt this yourself.
Good Luck and Happy Holidays!
Sparkles1
I work on behalf of HP
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Constant disk activity; who is doing that?

Hello there,
I pimped my G5 with two new internal drives (WD 1TB Caviar Black) and copied onto them clones of other disks and volumes (with SuperDuper), including my old system. Seems to be quite succesful operation; nearly all works as usual again.
Of course I expected mdimport to do some heavy indexing, with constant disk activity as a result.
But, after a couple of days, there is still constant disk activity: every second or so some 5,99MB is being written to disk, according to Activity Monitor.
I do not understand which app is doing this, for no one seems to be very busy at all.
Any ideas out there?
Appreciated,
Marius

I just dealt with this problem effectively on my Mac Pro (Snow Leopard 10.6.4), after considerable mucking around. Hard drive noise, flashing lights, system slow-downs, all driving me nuts (admittedly, a short drive).
Turned out to be Spotlight. As it happens I have a WD Studio 1-terabyte Firewire drive that's always hooked up. I back up to it several times a day when I'm on a project, and it has clones of my application drive and three data drives, all visible on my desktop. I also have a separate Windows drive that's visible. Recently, for reasons known only to Apple, I'm sure, Spotlight began indexing and re-indexing the cloned logical drives on the WD Studio. Never stopped -- as soon as it finished, it would start again. I simply went into the Privacy tab of the Spotlight preference pane from System Preferences, made sure that all my drives appeared in the box, and then removed all four cloned drives and the Windows drive so that Spotlight would no longer index them.
Problem solved. If you have extra physical or logical drives beyond those actually in your system (as opposed to Firewire or USB drives), try removing them and re-adding them in the Privacy tab of the Spotlight preference pane. Then wait for Spotlight to re-index the drives -- could take a bit of time, and the drives will keep accessing until re-indexing is complete. If that works, you're good. If it doesn't and the process just keeps going, you might have to remove permanently the external drives and clones from the list of drives to be indexed. That's what I ended up having to do.
Hope this helps.

White disk indicator light is out, but no seeming performance problems.Problem needing service or ignore??

Hard disc indicator light on right front of laptop lights only periodically at startup or restart. There appears not to be any performance problems. Do I have a problem in the making? Danger in the future? Need service? Or did I just choose the wrong option somewhere?

The white LED is not a disk activity or power indicator. MacBooks don't have either of these. The indicator will only light as mentioned by Dave Stowe... when your display is asleep it will come on and when your system is asleep, it will pulsate. From what you have indicated, it seems to be working correctly.

CR52 disk indicator light

I've just installed a new CR52 CDRW. I used live update to get the latest BIOS. I understood that the indicator is supposed to stay on when a CD is in the drive - this does not work for me. The light works normally when the drive is reading etc.
Model MS-8352M
Firmware v3.70

The white LED is not a disk activity or power indicator. MacBooks don't have either of these. The indicator will only light as mentioned by Dave Stowe... when your display is asleep it will come on and when your system is asleep, it will pulsate. From what you have indicated, it seems to be working correctly.

E530 100% disk activity

My new E530 often runs so slowly, it's a joke. When this happens, I see the disk activity is at 100% for long periods of time, sometimes for hours, even when I'm not using the machine, or only doing light internet browsing and using MS Office.
During those periods, CPU is running at about 10% and memory at about 55%.
I do not use my computer for gaming or any intensive applications.
How can I stop the disk activity running at 100%?

Hi Adeleg,
Welcome to Lenovo Community Forums!
I’m sorry to hear that you are facing the issue with System slow performance on ThinkPad E530.
1. Verify whether the problem occurs intermittently or frequently
2. Verify whether the problem occurs at some certain occasions or under some conditions. Figure out specific slow environments; check is it slowing during startup, slow during playing game, slow during surfing internet.
3. Make sure that the current configuration meets the recommended configuration of the current OS. Remove all external devices and restore factory default hardware configurations by uninstalling all non-bundled devices.
4. Check LSC -Performance and Configuration History - Critical Events (for faulting applications); For machine running Windows 7 / Vista without using LSC, use Windows Realiability monitor to check (command line to run: perfmon /rel).
5. Check if the system is getting more heating while in use.
6. Run complete anti-virus scan.
7. Run HDD and Memory diagnostics.
8. If problem persists, advise to restore preload operating system.
Hope this helps. Do post back if issue persists!
Best regards,
Hemanth Kumar
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FF 18.0.1 constant disk activity after 1 minute with no tabs open

FF 18.0.1 on Windows XP SP3.
Within 1 minute of starting FF I observe constant and excessive disk activity.
I am unable to use any other applications due to the response time.
I have closed all tabs and disabled all plugins.
I have just started a FF "reset to factory default", but pop-up window for "Please wait while Firefox cleans up your old data" has been running for 15 minutes.
Any ideas?

It sounds like you've got some other problems on your computer as well.
Restart your PC, then try the steps at http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/maintenance/speed.aspx#fbid=6pXkdz7T_94 to try to clean your computer up.
After that, Try to reset Firefox again.

IMac 27" i7 won't turn on. No disk activity.

Ive seen some similar dicussions here but none that are exactly like what happened to me.
The big problem is my iMac is stone cold dead. I push the power button and nothing happens, no disk activity, no fans, no nothing. As if it had been un plugged.
I dont know if it could be related but I was sing Boot Camp. I created the partition, it asked for the windows disk, I put it in. the iMac restarted, I got the chime and the gray screen (no apple logo). I was expecting the windows installer to start up, no luck. The iMac was on the gray screen for several minutes, then the apple logo appeared and then I got the log in window. I thought it was strange so I restarted and held down the "option" key, I got the gray screen for several minutes again. I then got the boot menu where I could see "Macintosh HD", "Bootcamp" and "Windows"(DVD). So I booted with the windows disk thinking it would start up the installer. Several minutes went by and it was still on the same screen. Then it restarted by itself, I heard the chime. Mind you, I had unplugged all the external hard drives I had and what not. So I pressed down on the touch pad to eject the windows disk. The disk ejected and the iMac got stuck on the gray screen for several minutes again. It restarted by itself. I thought I would leave it to boot all the way into Lion again. This time the gray screen didnt go away, I waited for over 20 minutes, got frustrated and pressed down on the power button for a hard reset. I powered on again, got the chime, then I got a black screen with white text saying it could not find a boot device. So I thought I would restart and hold down option key to boot from "Macintosh HD". I powered it down, and it never powered on again. That was it. No Hard drives spinning, no fans runnig, nothing.
I checked the outlet, plugged the iMac to a different outlet, checked the power cable, etc. It all seemed fine.
I reset the SMC, several times in fact, and nothing.
I even opened the Memory Access Door and removed and put back the memory cards. Not sure why, but Im desperate.
So Thats it. Im gonna take it to the apple techs but I thought I would get some comments from the community. Any ideas??? . Any help is appreciated.
iMac specs:
3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB
2TB Serial ATA Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5

Sounds like a failed power supply. Because the machine is covered by warranty take it into your local Apple Store or AASP for service. Make sure you book an appointment first. You can try doing a SMC reset and Pram reset first but I don't think they'll work.
SMC RESET
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord and all peripherals.
Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
Release the power button.
Attach the computers power cable.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
PRAM RESET
Shut down the computer.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.

Disk Activity Light?

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