Ways to Solve Hard Disk LED (Activity) Non Stop Blinking Issues
After installing and running Windows Vista, a lot of users probably notice that the hard disk activity by Vista operating system is enormous, and probably unbelievable to say the least. The hard disk activity, which normally can be monitored via hard disk LED on computer’s casing, will show almost non-stop continuing operating, with LED blinks non-stop. Frequent hard disk I/O read/write activity by Vista will undoubtedly reduce system performance.
Why is Vista always accessing and writing or reading from HDD drive? The heavy usage of hard disk by Vista is probably due to some running background processes that poorly implemented or not optimized. There is a few tips and tricks to tweak Vista so that the operating can work ’silently’, or at least does not run such a high activity level on hard disks. Note that by applying the tricks, you may disable one or more
- Install Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) – Windows Vista SP1 improves on performance of various services and processes, which hopefully will reduce the need to access hard disks. Even though a lot of users notice slower PC and sluggishness right after installing SP1, however the slowdown is anticipated and expected to go away after a while, as explained by Microsoft in “notable changes for SP1” – the Windows Vista SP1 install process clears the user-specific data that is used by Windows to optimize performance, which may make the system feel less responsive immediately after install. As the customer uses their SP1 PC, the system will be retrained over the course of a few hours or days and will return to the previous level of responsiveness.
- If SP1 does not help, try to disable Windows SuperFetch, a service that preloads or prefetches frequently used programs to files to memory. Alternatively, users can use the following command in command prompt with administrative privileges:
net stop sysmain
- Disable Volume Shadow Copy (Volume Snapshot Service or VSS) and Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider service, which is the service creating snapshot backup copy of files for System Restore and Previous Versions. Note that disable Volume Shadow Copy service will disable your ability to restore system and user files when needed in time of accident or corruption.
- Disable System Restore for all hard disks. Note that once disabled, all restore points will be deleted, and users no longer able to restore system to previous state.
- Disable scheduled disk defragmentation for all drives. To disable automatic scheduled defragmentation, run Disk Defragmenter and uncheck the check box for “Run on a schedule (recommended)”.
- Disable disk indexing and files compression for all disk drives. To disable search indexing and files compression, right click on each drive, then uncheck the check boxes for “Compress this drive to save disk space” and “Index this drive for faster searching” options.
- Search indexing is powered by Windows Search service, which can also be turned off if not in used. See the guide to completely disable search indexing service.
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January 3rd, 2010 19:20
When you tell people on forums the blinking starts *before* the OS starts to load, they will still in true OCD-form tell you it’s a setting within the OS. For those who actually know it’s without a shadow of a doubt NOT hdd activity, you might want to first: reset your BIOS (make necessary changes after for raid configurations etc ofcourse) and second (or immediately, skipping the first step): turn ON your Marvell IDE controller. This incessant blinking behaviour actually occurs because of the IDE controller being turned off and according to me, the BIOS goes panics because it thinks it has nothing to load an OS with. (even though it often does, SATA/raid) That’s the only explanation I can give you, other than that it’s just a silly programming error by either ASUS, Marvell or the people responsible for the blinking procedure in the BIOS
For reference, I’ve had this problem occur on a P5Q Pro mainboard and it was resolved with these steps. Having your boot time increase by 5-10 seconds (useless IDE scan) is worth a blinkless PC life imo 
December 6th, 2009 01:32
To resolve The problem of non stop operation of hard disk following things can be checked -
1. Was a System Restore operation done before the problem came? If yes then please confirm the hardware at restore point and restoration time is same.
This problem can come if the OS is looking for hardware which is absent.
2. Use Advance system info in Win XP Help and Support menu. Find out if there are any Orphan services by running Services Info menu. Disable or correct the services.
August 5th, 2009 11:33
I had the same problem with two of my vista laptops. One was Toshiba and the other one was Sony Vaio. Tried all the options and none of them worked.
Finally I booted my computer from the CD disk and ran “chkdsk” with /f option. It found errors in both machines and fixed them. This cured all the problems and I am back on with full speed and very limited hard disk activity now.
May 19th, 2009 05:52
[...] seria adicción al disco. Y es de suponer que alguien en Microsoft perdió una guerra interna, pues todo el lastre soltado entre Vista y W7 Beta se volvió a cargar en un sinfín de procesos de indexación, actualización, optimización, [...]
April 20th, 2009 03:08
Check out this excellent (despite its name) website: http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm. Using the “Tweaked” option cured the problem for me.
April 13th, 2009 11:57
Had this problem for a while. I don’t know if it’s really a problem other than excessive wear and tear on the drives.
Tried all these solutions a year ago with the same results. The Windows 7 beta did the same thing. Random blinking, constant and forever.
September 26th, 2008 11:13
Thanks for the tips but it’s a shame such a modern and advance OS is so convoluted. Why does it have to reboot after every update? Why does it reboot without permission? It did that the other day on me while burning a DVD. Apple fanboys piss me off and iTunes is a POS but I have to admit OSX is a better OS.
April 8th, 2008 09:59
Note — the light continues to blink when the drive is in spin down standby mode. No R/W going on. None of your responses will work.
Other web gurus also fail to note that point. BTW, no blink when W98 startup disk boots the machine. So what gives with XP and Vista?
No cigar today
Freddie Mack
Lanham Md