Hard Disc Drive Light Blinking

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Larchus

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Apr 20, 2014
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Hello!

I noticed tonight that my hard disc drive activity light is constantly blinking. Not in the usual way, either, it's a consistent blink every second. It's very strange. Additionally, whenever my hard disc is doing something activity wise, I hear the ticcing stop in accordance with the blinking. Last time it was really noticeable was when I ran a malware scan (I thought it might be a sign of malware or something so I ran a search).

Should I be as concerned as I feel? This is very strange. It's a 7200 RPM hard disc drive. I tried restarting my computer and I notice the blinking even before I log into windows, and when the hard drive seems to be at a complete idle (though resource monitor seems to pic up consistent, small activity spikes).

I'm clueless. I don't even know where to start looking, or whether this is even a serious problem or not.
 
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harrystam

harrystam

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Nov 8, 2015
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This is almost a silly question (if you don't know computers well).
First: How many drives do you have?
Second...The drive light indicator indicates all drive activity. So if you are using you OS on your main drive *blink blink* If you are using programs on another drive *blink* searching pics on a separate HDD *blink*
I have 3 HDD's and 1 SSD. My drive light is blinking all the time.
 
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Larchus

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Apr 20, 2014
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I followed D_Know_WD's advise (it's a WD drive, too, so it's appropriate) and decided to do a quick SMART test using Western Digital's Data Lifeguard.

It's seeming like my initial suspicions are confirmed. It hangs right before the test is complete, and now, instead of the typical "I'm reading data" tapping, there's rhythmic tapping in accordance to the blinking.

Looks to me like the drive's gonna give up the ghost. Well, in that case, I'm sure glad I didn't save anything irreplaceable on it, nor did I put my OS on it. And as luck would have it, I just installed a one 1 TB SSD that can fit all the data it holds, so I should be able to back it all up.

I can't help but wonder though. I did have to move a few things around when I was installing my GPU recently. I thought I was careful, I only unplugged the SATA and Power cables from the HDD so I could move the SSD, and remove the drive bays to fit the card in (the GTX 1070 is a physical beast, as well as a technical one). I wore an AS wristband clipped to the case, computer was unplugged, power supply switched off... Could it have been something I did? Or am I mistaking correlation for causation? The DHH was a refurb, after-all.

Either way, looks like I oughta back up what I can and mosey on over to NewEgg for a new'un.
 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

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Jul 30, 2014
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That is unpleasant. :(
It's good that you don't have crucial data over there though. You should always back up your important data, even if it is stored on an SSD.

Well, the drive could have been failing before the GPU installation. Yet, we can't really know that for sure. When buying a refurbished HDD, it is a good idea to test it once you install it. Once again, you can't be absolutely sure, as the SMART could be good and the condition of the drive could deteriorate after a couple of days.

To sum it up, drives, no matter mechanical or solid state ones, could just fail, as any other mechanical/electronic piece of hardware. So, always back up the data you can't afford to loose.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD :)
 
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