Blinking Light on PC Tower

[jjoggman_724]

I recently had my hard drive and power supply replaced by the Geek Squad at Best Buy.  After recovering my PC info from the Geek Squad Data Back Up folder I noticed that the blinking light next to the power button on my tower blinks continuously, is there a problem and if so how can I get it to stop?  My internet connection is a Local Area Connection, I'm not sure what type of power supply was installed,  I threw the box away, the hard drive that was installed is a WD Blue/1 TB/7200 RPM Tr/Min - 64 MB/Mo Cache Desktop Internal Hard Drive. 

[mdklassen]

> I noticed that the blinking light next to the power button on my tower blinks continuously.

Take a close look. Is there any tiny "icon" labelling that lamp ?

If you disconnect the Ethernet cable from the computer, does the lamp completely go out?

If so, it was signalling either active Internet traffic, or active Input/Output to your disk-drive.

Is the lamp blinking "erratically", or steadily (like a metronome) ?

[jjoggman_724]

I disconnected the internet cable at my router and the light still continues to blink erratically and there is an icon on the front panel, in front of and below the blinking light, see the attached pic.  I don't know if the icon pertains to that lamp.

[mdklassen]

> see the attached pic. 

Sigh.  Unfortunately, due to the resolution of the image, I cannot see any "icon".

I'm still thinking that it is a "disk activity" light.

Experiment: open "My Documents", and right-mouse-button-click on any folder, and choose "Virus Scan" (the wording might be different).  Watch that lamp -- does it now become "nearly-always-on", and then go "mostly-off" when the virus-scan completes?

[jjoggman_724]

This is what the Icon looks like, the elipse at the top could be a little narrower though. 

I do believe the light indicates some type of activity, I wonder could this continuous activity be harmful to my computer over time. 

When I perform a virus scan on my document folders the light does become nearly always on, occasionally becoming erratic.  When the scan completes the light goes back to blinking erratically.

[mdklassen]

> I wonder could this continuous activity be harmful to my computer over time. 

It would be "deadly" if the light would NEVER be lit -- that would be a symptom that your disk-drive has "died".

Start the Windows "Task Manager".

Click to the "Performance" tab.

Click "Resource Monitor" at the bottom of the window.

In the "Overview" tab, you will see 4 entries:

* CPU

* Disk

* Network

* Memory

and 4 moving time-series graphs to the right.

Does the brightness of the lamp on the case match the "peaks" for the graph for "disk activity" ?

Note that Windows 10 does a lot of "self-monitoring" in the background, and other stuff, such as disk-defragmentation when the computer is idle, checking for and downloading updated anti-virus definitions, and searching online for Windows updates.  All these tasks generate "input/output" traffic to your disk-drive.  Harmful ?  No.

[jjoggman_724]

Here is a picture of of my Resource Monitor (Processes with Disk Activity), I can't make heads or tails of it, maybe you can.  I am using Windows 7 Home Premium on my computer.   Lately to save wear and tear of my computer I've been putting it to sleep after 15 minutes of non use.   As long as there is no harm to my computer I'll just have to deal with the blinking light, Thank you for your assistance, let me know if the picture tells you anything.

[mdklassen]

> I'll just have to deal with the blinking light.

It shows that your disk-drive is being used -- it is a nice "diagnostic" to show that your computer has not "frozen" nor "crashed".

If your computer becomes "sluggish", look at the light -- if it is "mostly-on", then your disk-drive is working hard, and keeping busy.

You could put a small piece of black electrical tape over the lamp, if you don't want to view it. 

[jjoggman_724]

Thank you for your time and effort..................John Ogg

[mdklassen · Accepted solution]

> Thank you for your time and effort ...

In this forum, please click the purple/white "thumbs-up" icon, for each posting that was helpful.

Also, click "Accept As Solution" for the "best" reply.