"Tom Ferguson" schreef in bericht
...
Run a disk check on the drive and check the option to fix errors.

For diagnostic purposes:

Turn off indexing on the drive.

If you have any program installed that catalogues pictures, videos, et al, check for an option to
disable it for that drive. Alternately, shut it off or temporarily remove it.


Tom
PS
Pesky observation: I get the point but you picked a flicker/flash frequency such that the light
would be perceived by most people as being steadily on.

Older "sound" film used to be recorded and projected at 24 frames per sec, silent film at 16
frames per second. Some people were annoyed by the "flicker". Most did not notice it.


"MPS" wrote in message ...
Hi all,

Vista Home Premium, 4GB, C:\drive internal, I:\drive USB

The accesslight on my 320GB D: drive containing ONLY Userdata music, pictures, documents started
recently to permanently flicker in a steady rhythm, say 20Hz. The drive sits in a dockingstation,
on
top of the MEDION computercase and connects through USB 2.0

C: Drive 320GB has all programs and programdata on it, so they are completely separated.

When accessed it will either light up stronger or gets dimmer, depending on the amount of data
read, then settles to regular flickering.
It used to be completely ON, except when accessed or written to.

The computer works allright but loading pictures or other data from D:drive is sluggish.
Performance
of the drive is clearly lower, it is busy. It will also needlessly wear out sooner.

On startup, its light is steady ON (as it used to), and starts to flicker following userlogon and
desktop visible.
During restarting the system, it will not stop to flicker.

Did the obvious scans, AVG, Spyware, defrag, empty Recycle bin, clean Registry etc.

Light's still on and flickering, as if contstantly acessesed by 'something'.
There is no outgoing activity to the Internet as displayed by my NetMonitor.

I have stopped, reset and restarted Searchindexer, which finished its job. No effect.

In Vista's Reliability and Performance Tool section Disk I can see no other permanent activity
going on for
D:drive (other than valid acesses) but sometimes
D:\$MFT NTFS50-MFT Master File Table and
D:\$Logfile.

The latter 2 files I cannot see in Explorer nor in TreeSize.
How to access those for inspection?

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Ciao,
Maria



Microsoft Windows [versie 6.0.6001]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. Alle rechten voorbehouden.

Here's the check's result:
No problems found

No indexers of any kind nor cataloging running.

Following the chkdsk Light's On now and shows a faint fast c. 30 Hz flicker
Maria

C:\Users\Senior21chkdsk i: /f
Het type bestandssysteem is NTFS.

Chkdsk kan niet worden uitgevoerd omdat het volume door
een ander proces wordt gebruikt. Chkdsk kan wel worden
uitgevoerd als dit volume eerst wordt ontkoppeld.
ALLE GEOPENDE INGANGEN NAAR DIT VOLUME
WORDEN IN DAT GEVAL ONGELDIG.
Wilt u een ontkoppeling van dit volume forceren? (J/N) j
Volume is ontkoppeld. Alle geopende ingangen naar dit volume
zijn nu ongeldig.
Volumenaam is DATA.

Bestanden controleren (stap 1 van 3)...
83200 bestandsrecords verwerkt.
De bestandscontrole is voltooid.
125 records met grote bestanden verwerkt.
0 records met beschadigde bestanden verwerkt.
0 EA-records verwerkt.
0 reparserecords verwerkt.
Indices controleren (stap 2 van 3)...
92502 indexvermeldingen verwerkt.
De indexcontrole voltooid.
0 niet-geïndexeerde bestanden verwerkt.
CHKDSK controleert de security descriptors (stap 3 van 3)...
83200 security descriptors verwerkt.
De controle van security descriptors is voltooid.
4652 gegevensbestanden verwerkt.
Het USN-logboek controleren...
35188192 USN-bytes verwerkt.
Controle van USN-logboek is voltooid.
Het bestandssysteem is gecontroleerd. Er zijn geen problemen vastgesteld.

312568640 kB totale schijfruimte.
159007525 kB in 71585 bestanden.
39088 kB in 4653 indexen.
0 kB in beschadigde sectoren.
259895 kB in gebruik door het systeem.
Het logboekbestand neemt 65536 kB in beslag.
153262131 kB beschikbaar op schijf.

512 bytes per cluster
625137281 clusters in totaal op schijf
306524263 clusters beschikbaar op schijf