I just recently rebuilt my HTPC and am using a 60GB SSD for the OS.  I've reinstalled the OS, the basic utilities etc, and the only other apps are TMT, My Movies, AnyDVD HD.  That's about it.  I haven't even installed any of the Gigabyte Power Management Utilities.

 

I noticed that my hard drive light flashes once every second or so all the time.  It never stops.  I don't recall it doing this on with my XP HTPC and was just wondering if this is due to the SSD possibly?  Is this normal or should I be concerned? 

I just recently rebuilt my HTPC and am using a 60GB SSD for the OS.  I've reinstalled the OS, the basic utilities etc, and the only other apps are TMT, My Movies, AnyDVD HD.  That's about it.  I haven't even installed any of the Gigabyte Power Management Utilities.

 

I noticed that my hard drive light flashes once every second or so all the time.  It never stops.  I don't recall it doing this on with my XP HTPC and was just wondering if this is due to the SSD possibly?  Is this normal or should I be concerned? 

 

..so you are still running WinXP on it, don't you?

I noticed the same behaviour with my XP based box, when using a SSD as system disk.

 

When I moved to Win7, the effect was gone.

This is a nice wrap-up why you should be concerned and what action to take when combining XP and a SSD.

And get CrystalDiskInfo, as it is the only app that easily shows you the remaining lifetime of the SSD.

Actually I'm running Win 7 on a brand new SSD.  I reinstalled the OS twice and each time it's the same thing.

Actually I'm running Win 7 on a brand new SSD.  I reinstalled the OS twice and each time it's the same thing.

 

hmmm...this is strange.

I am not a Win expert at all and do not know what indicates if a SSD is working fine with Win7.

My first 2 cents are these:

Maybe the SSD is - in some way - not advertised as such - and Win7 won't recognise it ?

Mine is a "Kingston SSDNowV+ SNV325 series", where this site claims that it has "Trim support"

for Win7 and therefore should work (which it does for me).

Do you have an optical drive (CD, DVD, BluRay) installed in your HTPC?  If so, you can try disabling this optical drive temporarily in windows control panel and see if this changes the HDD light flashing behavior.  Go to control panel, device manager, then right click your optical drive and select "disable." 

 

Optical drives are polled regularly by Windows (watching for an inserted disk) and will cause the HDD light to blink every second or so.

 

Don't forget to re-enable your optical drive in control panel after this test.

After installing an SSD there are a few items you should turn off to prevent unnecessary access of the drive by Windows.

 

Read this for a detailed explanation of how to configure a Win7 machine after installing an SSD.

 

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/70822-ssd-tweaks-optimizations-windows-7-a.html

What SSD are you using?  I noticed a problem with pauses & such on my older OCZ Core v2, but I replaced it with a Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV425-S2BN/128GB, and the pauses & such went away.  Some of the older SSD's have buggy controllers, which require a flash upgrade to fix (at least on my Core v2, I got a non-official flash of a newer firmware and it runs much better, but still NOWHERE near my SNV425)...

 

It'll depend on the model as to what the problem could be, so we'll definitely need the manufacturer/model & firwmare it's currently running..