| Hard Drive Light |
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CookieRevised
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RE: Hard Drive Light
Pulling out the small wire connection on the motherboard is the only and best solution, as Adeptus already said....
It is also extrememly easy and you don't do any damage to anything. (sticking tape can leave residu, it is also ugly, and (quite frankly) stupid todo if all you need to do is open the case for half a minute and disconnect the two wires from the motherboard... You do NOT need to cut anything at all (like Dr4g0n suggested), you only need to disconnect a small connector... Just for info: you even don't need to turn of the pc, but I do NOT recommend doing it without turning it off though)...
Open your case, locate the hard disk light and notice the two wires (usually red and black) connected to it. Follow those wires to the small black connector on the motherboard (sometimes also has "HDD" printed in white on it), pull it out... close case, done.
(the same can be done for the power light, the reset button and the internal speaker)
But note: having a hard disk light can be very usefull. Especially when you need to diagnose problems. And by the time a problem occures it is already too late to connect the light again anyways.
It can also be very usefull to detect dubious hard disk activity. eg: all of a sudden your HDD starts to do a masive amount of stuff = this can indicate virus activity (eg: HDD is being formatted or erased!)... Or every second your hard disk light lights up, this can also indicate malicous activity which you would otherwise not notice... Etc.
This post was edited on 06-10-2007 at 01:37 AM by CookieRevised.
.-= A 'frrrrrrrituurrr' for Wacky =-. |
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| 06-10-2007 01:32 AM |
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ShawnZ
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RE: Hard Drive Light
quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
It can also be very usefull to detect dubious hard disk activity. eg: all of a sudden your HDD starts to do a masive amount of stuff = this can indicate virus activity (eg: HDD is being formatted or erased!)... Or every second your hard disk light lights up, this can also indicate malicous activity which you would otherwise not notice... Etc.
its VERY unlikely that a virus would ever bother to erase things on your hard drive; the only real point of any recent malicious application is to connect to a botnet. disk activity fluctuates very frequently for no apparent reason (mostly if you don't have much RAM.) if there was no disk activity for a long period, and it suddently jumped without any user interaction, it could very well be a defragger or an indexer  Spoiler: the game.
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| 06-10-2007 01:37 AM |
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CookieRevised
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RE: Hard Drive Light
Shawnz, I speak out of experience...and I explicity said "it _can_ indicate", not "it does indicate"... Of course it can mean a defragger or whatever else you set the pc todo after a time. But I speak of dubious activity, not about expected and known activity.
As for formatting or erasing done by malicious stuff, those are obviously just examples, simply reading and writing (eg: logs which will later be send by email) will also light up the led.
As for defraggers and other stuff like that, if a program shows it is doing something on the hard disk and you don't see the hard disk light lighting up, this too might indicate there is a problem and the program actually may have froozen. Or vica versa, if a program doesn't seem todo anything, but you see the hard disk light flickering, it means the program hasn't froozen and is still busy...
Another example (which happens a lot, see Google): slow or slower than normal running PCs can be caused by many things. If you have a HDD led that is flickering constantly, you can immediatly focus your attention to running programs (many times malicious stuff) and eliminatie a whole lot of other things (too less memory, bad settings in bios, froozen program stealing resources, etc, etc)...
Without a hard disk light you wont (easly) notice all these kind of things (unless you constantly run a hard disk monitor).
HDD light activity (or the lack of it) can be the first step to notice something is not quite right, arguing otherwise is giving wrong info.
This post was edited on 06-10-2007 at 02:13 AM by CookieRevised.
.-= A 'frrrrrrrituurrr' for Wacky =-. |
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| 06-10-2007 01:44 AM |
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ShawnZ
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RE: Hard Drive Light
quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
Without a hard disk light you wont (easly) notice all these kind of things (unless you constantly run a hard disk monitor).
you shouldn't be relying on your hard disk LED as a virus scanner. even suggesting the possibility that it may somehow assist you in detecting malicious activity is one of the stupider ideas i've heard. Spoiler: the game.
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| 06-10-2007 02:26 AM |
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CookieRevised
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RE: Hard Drive Light
quote:
Originally posted by ShawnZ
quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
Without a hard disk light you wont (easly) notice all these kind of things (unless you constantly run a hard disk monitor).
you shouldn't be relying on your hard disk LED as a virus scanner. even suggesting the possibility that it may somehow assist you in detecting malicious activity is one of the stupider ideas i've heard.
 I did NOT say, nor suggested, to RELY on it as a virus scanner anywhere!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I said it can be a FIRST INDICATION for WHATEVER that MIGHT be out of the ordinary (which is not neccesairly a virus to begin with anwyays). Just as your computer making funny noises might be a first indication of something being wrong. It is EXACTLY the same thing and not at all stupid in any way!
This post was edited on 06-10-2007 at 03:33 AM by CookieRevised.
.-= A 'frrrrrrrituurrr' for Wacky =-. |
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| 06-10-2007 03:15 AM |
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lizard.boy
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RE: Hard Drive Light
quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
I said it can be a FIRST INDICATION for WHATEVER that MIGHT be out of the ordinary (which is not neccesairly a virus to begin with anwyays). Just as your computer making funny noises might be a first indication of something being wrong. It is EXACTLY the same thing and not at all stupid in any way!
I'm defiantly gonna have to agree with cookie with this one.. The diagnostic LEDs are there for a reason. It may not be the best indication of something malicious, but it can defiantly help detect problems. No flashing light = no drive activity which usually = problem. |
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| 06-10-2007 03:50 AM |
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ShawnZ
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RE: Hard Drive Light
quote:
Originally posted by lizard.boy
No flashing light = no drive activity which usually = problem.
The diagnostic lights can be used for diagnostics; not an indication of "suspicious activity." And they're even pretty bad for diagnostics. What's an hdd led going to do for you that something like procmon wont? In fact, if you're debugging something, the hdd light will probably be useless to you 99% of the time anyway compared to a tool like procmon. Spoiler: the game.
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| 06-10-2007 04:38 AM |
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Anubis
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RE: Hard Drive Light
quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
eg: all of a sudden your HDD starts to do a masive amount of stuff = this can indicate virus activity (eg: HDD is being formatted or erased!)... Or every second your hard disk light lights up, this can also indicate malicous activity which you would otherwise not notice... Etc.
Quite correct, it can be a good indicator of strange activity.
However, I would not recommend less experienced computer users panic every time the LED indicates a lot of hard drive activity, nowadays there are numerous household programs (eg. Windows Automatic Updater, Antivirus programs like AVG, Many IM clients, Steam) that automatically update themselves, by default, and this will cause a sudden surge in unexpected hard disk activity.
quote:
Originally posted by ShawnZ
its VERY unlikely that a virus would ever bother to erase things on your hard drive
There are many malicious programmes, such as worms, that are designed to get in and erase data on computers. Many writers of malicious software are targeting businesses, and erasing data is a good way to do this. |
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| 06-10-2007 09:43 AM |
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