----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Lendrim" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2003 4:51 AM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Dual drive activity lights


> I'm upgrading to an Intel D845PESV MB with WinXPPro.
> It's in a Lian Li case with two Lian Li RH-321 hard drive mobile racks.
> The top drawer. Whenever the computer is on,
> both HD activity lights flash in unison all the time, from bootup until
> shutdown. I have used this same setup on W98 machines for a long time and
never saw
> this. The D: drive always used to "sleep" until I Ghosted C: to the D: for
> backup purposes. Anybody know why this is happening?

I see it all the time, nothing wrong with it.  It happens when you have two
devices on same cable and both mobile racks will flash the LED regardless
which device is active, as long as there is activities going on on the
channel, LED flashes.

> Is this a false
> indication?

You can call it that way, but it is just what it was designed for.  All IDE
racks I've seen do it (cheapo or expensive), I can't remember if SCSI racks
have same problem or not, because I almost always setup SCSI in RAID or on
its own (so can't tell).

> Are both drives being written to identically?

absolutely no.

> Should they be on different IDE
> controllers? Is this an XP or a hardware problem?

As long as you keep the mobile racks, you will see it, non operating system
or any other hardware is responsible for it.  I'm not sure why didn't you
see it under win98, as it always happens.  If you keep the two racks on
different channels, the dual flash will disappear, but you have to keep the
two channels clean (only racks, no CDROM or any other IDE devices), as long
as there is activities (eg. from CDROM), the rack LED will flash.

Jun Qian

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