Hard Drive Light Emulator

I've just got a new Dell Inspiron, and I'm a little disconcerted without the reassurance of a flashing hard drive light, especially with long installs. Is there something that can reveal HDD activity onscreen, e.g. in the system tray?

ProfK

Posted 2010-04-19T13:50:43.517

Reputation: 2 094

Answers

You can try HDDPerf, which is dedicated to showing more details about the moments when the HDD is heavily used.

HDDPerf1 HDDPerf2 HDDPerf3

DiskMon from Sysinternals can also be minimized to systray and act like a replacement HDD activity light.

DiskMon

DiskMon and HDDPerf are both freeware.

Gnoupi

Posted 2010-04-19T13:50:43.517

Reputation: 7 909

DiskMon is a little outdated; it has been replaced with ProcMon. – user1686 – 2010-04-19T19:19:44.110

@grawity - But ProcMon doesn't minimize to tray, and thus doesn't answer this particular question (or I missed the option) – Gnoupi – 2010-04-19T20:22:41.493

HDDLed Indicator shows real-time read and write operations on hard disk drive as small blinking indicators. Features:

Monitor multiple hard drives.

Monitor multiple logical discs.

All-in-one mode - single indicator for all drives.

Use keyboard ScrollLock led to indicate activity.

Use system tray to indicate activity.

Separate read and write operations.

Free to try, 20 bucks to buy.

Mehper C. Palavuzlar

Posted 2010-04-19T13:50:43.517

Reputation: 51 093

3$20 for a little blinking light? overpriced IMO. – davr – 2010-04-19T16:59:40.197