Seeing a disc drive run.

[Loose rivets]

W7 RC

I have an old eIDE drive running as F G H & I It used to make a very distinctive rumble. When I fitted the new Barracuda it sounded more like a tearing noise. It was noticeably quicker.

Fine, without reverence to any visual aid, I could tell which drive was running. Suddenly this has stopped.

Now, writing to, and reading from, seems perfect, but the reassuring rumble isn't there. Short of disabling the new drive for a test, how can I achieve a visual aid to tell me which drive is going? I just have a gut feeling that I may be being deceived.



Whatever happened to individual LEDs ????

[Bushfiva]

The Seagate website has a downloadable utility that tells you the SMART status of yoru drive. It should reassure you. There are many other utilities that also display SMART info.

[mixture]

LR,

You may wish to check out this website, created by a data recovery company, that contains samples of the many sounds they've seen hard drives make when in self destruct mode....

Failing hard drive sounds - Datacent.com - Datacent

P.S.

I achieve a visual aid to tell me which drive is going?

Is wishful thinking.... there will be a lot of background chatter going on that would make such a thing a pointless attempt as there would be almost continuous comms going on to both drives.

[Loose rivets]

Bushfiva, I did write a reply and then for some reason didn't post it...the gist was that I need such a simple piece of information that I don't really want to load anything that will tempt me to play with it.

Mixture, that's interesting. I was under the (wishful) impression, that the little used drive spent most of its time spooled down. Maybe not. Now I need an annunciation light even more.


However, I've done two things. Posing the question, tilted me over the edge and I booted on the other drive - and yes, it seems to have got the latest files. The other thing is that I've remembered positioning the old drive in a slot instead of vertically downwards as HP put it originally. I find it hard to believe, but it must have been amplifying the noise on the front chassis.

In W7 I don't seem to have the disc monitoring program that was in XP Pro, but that may have been some apps that was put on the bogus disc ( that I posted on some time ago.)

Come to think of it, that handy item was all I need cos it did show activity. Anyone know if it was part of XP Pro or not?

[mixture]

the little used drive spent most of its time spooled down

Well, there may be exceptions to the rule.... on laptops for example, the manufacturers frequently ship special drivers that will spool down the drives because that's the single biggest battery life killer.

But on desktops, pretty much from the moment DC power hits the drive, to the moment it is removed, the thing never stops spining.

Whether or not I/O happens depends on a multitude of things ..... for example are you running both drives in a RAID one setup ... in which case the controller would definitley be busy chattering to keep things in sync.

Windows is also quite a noisy OS in terms of I/O ..... pleanty of background processes to keep your PC busy..... ;-)

Now I need an annunciation light even more.

Heh ... obviously PC manufacture is not an attractive career path for avionics engineers.... shame though..... no doubt a lot of things could be learnt.....

[mixture]

Me again.... could this be the Microsoft tool you seek ?

DiskMon for Windows

[Loose rivets]

I'd forgotten about that program. At first it seemed to do exactly what I wanted, but then I noticed that the warning lights were not following the rules.

I'd loaded the exe file twice...(one copy on each physical drive). Two lights on the tray seemed to be independent at first, but L-S-S, they weren't.

With the screen open, one can see that as the second copy opens, the first just stops. The full screen shows drive in use - 0 or 1 - but there seems nothing to actually force each program to just look at one drive, and then reduce to warning lights only.

Indeed, when I had another look at 'Process monitor', it doesn't have any indication of the drive in use. Well, not as far as I can see in the allotted time. I opened columns showing I/O, but nothing stated where the reading and writing was taking place.

Heh ... obviously PC manufacture is not an attractive career path for avionics engineers.... shame though..... no doubt a lot of things could be learnt.

Hah! The most money I've ever earned was as the owner of a computer company. I built CAD work-stations and one year they were the fastest PC based units in the world...at least at Comdex Fall in LV. Then windows came along. I told everyone that operating systems should be pure and dedicated to a specific job. Windows would never catch on.

I've just been arguing with 'er indoors about using one of the laptops to record t/v. I said that I didn't have time to catch up with the technology...so much of what I read here might as well have been from the dead sea scrolls. Different world now.

[390cruise]

Dinner

Rivets old chap

All this talk of computers, you should get out more often, could I suggest dinner in Frinton ?

390

[mixture]

How about this..... never used it, just a quick Googoo....

HddLed Indicator - Hard disk drive activity software led indicator with separate read and write operations in real-time.

Features apparently include :
"Monitor multiple hard drives."
"Monitor multiple logical discs. "

I said that I didn't have time to catch up with the technology

That's the problem with the current IT industry..... it's run by the sales & marketing departments who sit on a committee with the bean counters. It's all about featuresets and grabbing marketshare. Most "manufacturers" employ more sales reps than engineers.

The only real engineering driven companies these days are Apple and HP, everyone else (Acer etc.) just seems to grab a handful of off-the-shelf parts ....mix in some off-the-shelf software and launch a "product".

The industry really needs to change from the ground up..... regrettably I think that will never happen.

[jimtherev]

Originally Posted by mixture

run by the sales & marketing departments who sit on a committee with the bean counters. It's all about featuresets and grabbing marketshare. Most "manufacturers" employ more sales reps than engineers.

The industry really needs to change from the ground up..... regrettably I think that will never happen.

Was that computing, or aeronautics or...

[Loose rivets]

Mixture, that sound like it's getting perilously close to what I want. $20. Ooooo...one was off to the garage this pm to bring in an old t/v 'chassis'. fair number of leds on there.

There must be a pick off point to supply LEDs. The old ones were build into the drive itself. Anyone remember if the signal came off the controller or the drive circuitry?

I looked at the electronics workbench and imagined it with no dust and debris. Easy job. Then I looked at me book, and thought better of it. Still 25,000 words to write and no time to play.

It was at this moment that the Rivetess told me I'd be floor-tiling tomorrow.

could I suggest dinner in Frinton ?

390, I would love another evening down the Red Lion. Didn't we use your MG last time? Perhaps you could nip to Texas and pick me up? I'd need bringing back though

PS temps went down to 71f today. I nearly froze. Maybe next spring.

Check your PMs

[mixture]

Was that computing, or aeronautics or...

I would take a guess that profit margins and product reliability are somewhat better in aeronautics....

Resellers pretty much give away PCs / Laptops these days, unless you're doing significant volumes you'll be lucky to make £10 on a £2000 laptop ! Manage a clean 5% margin and you're doing well !

There must be a pick off point to supply LEDs. The old ones were build into the drive itself. Anyone remember if the signal came off the controller or the drive circuitry?

Perfectly viable, the little disk duplication box I've got on my desk has a light that flashes when data is being copied.

You just need to pick up the right signal off the cable, probably no coding involved, just pure electronics.

For a PC building guru like you it should be a piece of cake .....

[Bushfiva]

"Hard Disk Indicator 1.3" can monitor up to 5 drives.

Hard Disk Indicator Download - Softpedia

[Loose rivets]

Bushfiva Thanks for that.

Doh! I've just seen that this is what mixture said in the first place. It's a lot less complicated than I'd feared, so I should have not shied away from it because of the complexity.

Back to original post:

That looked interesting, but at first glance it seemed to only cover one physical drive. I didn't try multiple loads because I saw, on the same site, "HDDLed indicator". This clearly shows the ability to cover more than one physical drive and many logical drives.

First try it failed. It wanted to be where the default install suggested. (C Program files) Put there, it ran.

Right now, it's sitting neatly away in the top left corner, and indeed is showing activity on the two physical drives. I have to stop playing now, so will look at it later.

Edit to say, I've just discovered that it can be repositioned onto the lower bar one segment at a time. ( I couldn't move them together) Then I found that by simply hovering over the segment, it confirmed the drive and gave the data pertaining to the read/write of the moment.

[mixture]

Ah Herr Loose Rivets.....

Enjoy your blinkenlights !

ACHTUNG!
ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENPEEPERS!
DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKSEN.
IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS.
ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.

[mixture]

I have to stop playing now, so will look at it later.

By the way, I suppose I better not tell you about the freeware edition of PRTG Network Monitor.....

You might end up as mission control with graphs of disk space usage and all sorts.... it can also send you emails and text messages....

Free network monitor - freeware download for PRTG Network Monitor

[Loose rivets]

This is a bit worrying.


The thing about these toys is that one finds out things that are perhaps best not known. As I gave my PC one of its full starts this morning, the little 'LEDs' of course showed frenetic activity on the C drive. However, E started to be read, and more worryingly, showed a proportion of writes. 780 reads versus 93 writes

D - the drive for programs - showed nothing.

My novel is in E, but that only accounts for a meager 80 files totaling less than 3 Mb Photos are the largest single 'type' of file. Well before it had finished buzzing away, I'd turned off every facet of Avast! That made no difference at all.

Procexp. Showed mostly MS activity, but some transitory things were too quick to catch.

Does the team think that this is normal?

[jimtherev]

Has something turned on an indexer? Windows seems to sneak one in every so often, but by far the most insidious is Nero. There was something else, too, a while ago... can't think what for now. But immediately you said photos, I said Nero.
Just a thought.

[Loose rivets]

I'm fairly sure that all of the old disk has been formatted since Nero was on it, and the new one--with the W7 OS--has never seen it.

I just don't have the time to learn the deeper aspects of the OS, so I'm not sure if it has some enhanced de-fragging going on. I gather one does not have to do this as much as the old days, so maybe it's house-keeping. However, the disparity between reads and writes belies this.

[mixture]

Engineering Windows 7 : Disk Defragmentation – Background and Engineering the Windows 7 Improvements

If you don't want to read the whole lot, skip to the bottom of the blog post, just above the bit where the comments start.