[dspillett]

For a modern OS a some inductor LED for drive activity would just be constantly flashing at different rates. Something is always writing to a log somewhere, just on the OS itself.

To actually be useful more information would need to be carried: different rates (by colour, brightness, or a simple bar of variable length), an indicator per drive if multiple, ...

[rightbyte]

It is good to know of the HD is in use so I can disable the perpetrator. I don't want to wear out my HDs for some convinience of a developer.

It is also the reason I like mechanical relays in car. You can hear the startup sequence and listen if something is wrong.

[userbinator]

Mine stays almost completely quiet most of the time, because I've trimmed the stuff running in the background to an absolute minimum.

[dspillett]

I've done that in the past, back when I was running Linux on very slow & apparently somewhat fragile solid state devices on a netbook, and when trying to keep traditional drives as quiet as possible in a desktop pretending to be a server that was on all hours, but for the most part I leave logging on and not overly buffered these days. SSDs are quiet and reliable¹ ATM.

--

[1] though for anything I care about I still RAID1² everything

[2] with devices from different sources, to reduce the chance of both dying at the same time (or the second dying before the first is replaced and the mirror rebuilt)

[andai]

On which OS?

[Kenji]

This is not true at all. I'm running Linux and I am alerted by the HDD LED when it lights up and then I realize that I left the BitTorrent client running or something like that. But in regular browsing and using the device, the LED is mostly off, blinking once every 10 seconds or so.