Hard Drive Activity Light

Whenever you hard drive activity light flashes, it means that your computer is trying to access (read from or write to) one of your hard drives. This is usually accompanied by a "clicking"-type noise that hard drives make when they're in seek mode.

It is not a bad thing if you see this light flash, but if it

• Flashes every second or so even when you aren't using your computer at all, or
• Stays on for a few seconds every time you boot into Windows or open a program (Word, Internet Explorer, etc.);

Hard drive activity lights are usually marked with the following symbol:

and are usually colored orange or red.