This is something that just started to happen and I don't know what is causing it, but even when my system is idle, my h/d lite flashes very dimly about once every 2 secs. I checked my processes and nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. When I have nothing else opened I have 19 processes running (WinXP Pro). I'm not 100% sure, but I think this h/d lite blinking started after I did the latest Windows Update. I don't see any loss of performance, but this seems to be more annoying than anything, but again, I'm not really sure.
Any thoughts on what may be causing this would be appreciated.
TIA

omg it happens to u too :huh:
i thought it happened only to me :o

this thing i noticed last year August when i first installed XP. i was soooo curious to know what was really happening. honestly still dunno what is exactly happening. but now i dont care about it either. i just satisfy myself thinking that it may be defragmenting the hdd while it is idle. lol - but dunno if it is the case - who knows.

can't believe it is a common issue :o

Could it possibly be the indexing service? Do you have the indexing service enabled on your hard drives? I think it is on by default. I really have no clue what it is, but this is one possible solution. You can enable/disable the service for the hard drive by going to the drive properties and unchecking a box.

I've got it too. Indexing is off and I have plenty of RAM (768Mb). Mine seems to be more frequent, about once a second. I've run out of ideas and am now just pretending it doesn't happen!

Just think the HDD is defragmenting when it is idle like i do, :P
...till we find the actual reason :)

Ok, what about something as simple as a clock? The clock has to be updated every second, and then displayed in windows, which is on the hard drive. Could it be something as simple as this? There are always things going on with your hard drive, and I dont think you can really narrow it down to one process or whatever.

lol. clocks are in Windows 95/NT/98/ME and 2000. but they don't let the HDD to act strangely like this :D

Any chance that in Outlook Express
under Tools/Options/Maintence you have the
Compact Messages in Background checked?

Thanks for the replies. Glad to see I'm not the only one this happens to.
I do have indexing service disabled and I don't use Outlook Express for e-mail, I use full Outlook and as far as I can see, there is no "Compact Messages in Background" option.

Try FileMon of http://www.sysinternals.com it will tell you witch program is accessing you harddisk.