Sata hdd activity indicator in a laptop. HDD activity indicator

Quote: "I bring to your attention another option on how to make an original hard drive load indicator. It is based on a change in voltage in the circuit, and converts these jumps into discrete values."

Led indicator
booting the hard drive -y for help
in creating a flash movie

Introduction

I’ll make a reservation right away: I’m not a modder, so I didn’t follow the canons of the genre. I am primarily interested in functionality, I care little about the aesthetic side.

I bring to your attention another option on how to make an original hard drive loading indicator. It is based on the change in voltage in the circuit, and converts these jumps into discrete values.

What is required for this:

Radioconstructor "LED level indicator". In Voronezh, it can be purchased for 55 r, which I do not recommend, since it is equipped with rather dim LEDs, and this money is not worth it. The only useful thing is the circuit board. Parts will cost 15 rubles.

It is advisable to purchase a 2-10 kΩ trimmer instead of R1.

LEDs (minimum 5 pieces).

molex power connector (female). I combined my scheme with an existing device, so I didn’t need it. You can use any power connection method.

When connecting the circuit to 12 V, it is advisable to run the LEDs through resistors. It depends on what kind of LEDs you are using - five volts are unlikely to need resistors, but 3 volts - most likely yes.

Wires, insulation/heat shrink, soldering iron (max. 40W), soldering accessories, etc.

Notes

It all depends on the LEDs that you are going to use (every psycho has his own program :-), more precisely on their price. Personally, I used an LED ruler for 32 rubles. In total, all this cost me 90 r, and for me, the mod is worth the money.

In general, I want to say that this radio designer is not ideal - the more LEDs glow, the dimmer they glow. The problem is partially solved by increasing the voltage (12 V instead of 5 V) and connecting the LEDs through resistors (470-510 ohms). But no one forbids trying another similar indicator - for example, you can search in "CHIP and DIP". So there is a lot of room for further development.

This scheme provides 5 discrete levels of indication. We can observe the similarity of this in the Winamp visualization in the "Spectrum Analyzer" mode.

Of course, for many, the first desire is to adapt this product for music, BUT ... Since I have enough indicators for music (and sounds in general), because instead of speakers I use the center, and it has a 7-band equalizer, and even in Winamp" There is none, so we will not engage in pop music and slightly diversify the scope.

The mod is quite simple and cheap in execution, especially for those who have been dealing with radio electronics for a long time. We will assume that everyone knows the soldering phase (editor's note: and whoever doesn't know, reads) - that is, they soldered the circuit, adjusted the power supply, distributed the LEDs by colors and pins (be careful - the circuit is non-standard!) - so let's move on to the first test.

If you buy a radio constructor, you should get something like this

Why "something" - because I slightly modified the circuit. I connected a blue LED so that it is constantly on (that is, separate from the circuit). It symbolizes the "cold" loading of the hard drive, that is, the zero level. I combined LEDs 2 and 3 to level 1, and LEDs 4 and 5 to level 2. I could initially use a 5 LED strip, but I made a mod with the future in mind if I suddenly find a circuit for 7-8 LEDs, for more accurate indication. The white electrolytic capacitor is not present in the original circuit, for me it acts as a voltage stabilizer.

We connect the power

Hint: If you take only one positive input with your fingers, then perhaps the first or second level will light up. This means the circuit is working.

Now we try to connect the inputs in parallel with the HDD Led (that is, usually the red dim LED, but you already have it DIFFERENT, right?). My LED is connected through a special connector (in the picture - white on the right), so it was not difficult to connect the indicator. Those who have LEDs soldered and insulated will have to tinker a bit.

Here was the first surprise. Initially, I wanted to use 5V power, but this circuit turned out to have one drawback (see above). When connecting the circuit to 12V (and adding resistors to the LEDs), the inputs connected to the HDD Led gave reverse currents, and made this same HDD Led glow half-heartedly. Perhaps due to the fact that I have a sensitive red LED (with which I replaced the original dim one). By removing the input ground (ground) from the circuit, I got the desired result. It's even better - less wires. If everything works fine for you with 2 wires connected, then leave it like that. (In the picture, the remaining input is the blue wire matching the red wire in the connector)

I want to note that this mod is not a complete replacement, but an addition to the main indicator. If HDD Led shows (relatively speaking) the channel load level (how large amounts of data are transferred), then the peak indicator displays how often (at what speed) data is transmitted over the channel. If you do not need to monitor the hard drive, then you can leave only the new indicator. Personally, I now have both indicators on the front of the system unit (for reference, the height of my LED bar is 4 cm).

Tuning

Most likely, your tuning resistor is small, and without a handle, so here we arm ourselves with a small (narrow) screwdriver, and start driving the hard drive. Personally, I took as a basis the operation of archiving small files (web pages), archiving large files (clips, for example), watching a movie through Windows Media Player, copying from one logical drive to another within the physical media. You can also try copying from one hard drive to another, or run Scandisk. We look at how the hard drive behaves, turn the resistor to set the range of indicator oscillations. In general terms, the point is to create different situations: weak loading of the hard drive (small volume in rare portions) and heavy loading of the hard drive (large volume in an almost continuous flow). In the first case, the peak indicator should twitch at level 1-2, in the second case, levels 1-4 will be on almost constantly, and level 5 will be on or blinking. Where to place the LEDs, the circuit, and so on - that is, aesthetic issues - it already depends on the imagination of everyone. Personally, I hid the circuit in the front box, and displayed the LEDs on the left side (on a grand scale for the future - I want to make a similar circuit for the Mobile Rack on the right).

Work illustration

Full load

HDD LED indicator in operation

Additionally

Advantages of this mod

1. Conceptually new element in the design - a great addition to any technogenic computer

2. Some utility. Having two indicators has already helped me several times. For example, do not restart the computer once again (there was a suspicion that it hung - but the indicator twitched - and after 5 minutes the machine recovered!). Or vice versa, feel free to press Reset - the download LED was constantly on, and the peak was at zero - a sure sign of hang

3. Originality

disadvantages

1. The one that was described above in the article - the voltage is distributed between all working LEDs. However, at high voltages it is not so noticeable. Yes, and pulsation gives "aliveness" to a modified (and genetically modified :-) computer.

2. The very first question of everyone to whom I showed the mod: "Does it react to your music?" TIRED, honestly

Our regular readers are quite well aware of the work of specialists from the Cyber ​​Security Research Center of Ben-Gurion University, Israel, who specialize in inventing unusual ways to hack and steal information from the bowels of the most secure computer systems. And recently they managed to find another potential source of information leakage, which is the LED indicator familiar to all of us, which displays the activity of the computer's hard drive.

We remind our readers that computers that perform critical operations or contain top-secret information are in most cases protected by the so-called "air barrier" method. This means that this computer is not connected to itself, nor to other computers connected to networks that have access to the Internet. This makes normal hacking impossible, and in order to extract information from the bowels of such a computer, it is necessary to resort to very sophisticated tricks.

In their research, the researchers found that by programming the sequence of program calls to the computer's hard drive in a certain way, it is possible to make the activity LED blink at a speed of about six thousand times per second. This frequency is quite enough to transfer data at a speed of up to 4 thousand bits per second. Of course, transferring one megabyte of data at this speed would take a little over half an hour, but it would take very little time to transfer stolen messages, passwords, encryption keys, and other such information.

To use the hard disk LED as a transmitter, you will need to install a special LED-it-GO spyware, already developed by Israeli researchers, on the computer under attack. Currently, the operation of this system has been tested on computers running the Linux operating system, but the researchers are confident that information can be stolen in exactly the same way from computers running Windows. A positive feature of this method is that all people have long been accustomed to the chaotic flashing of the computer hard drive indicator and are unlikely to notice changes in the nature of its work. And the modulation of the glow of the LED with a frequency of several kilohertz is far beyond the capabilities of the perception of the human eye.

But, ensuring that information is transmitted through the hard drive LED is only half the process of stealing information. The second part of the work can be done by a tiny spy drone equipped with a high-speed camera and photosensors. The camera lens can be focused exclusively on the computer's LED, and then the sensitivity of the sensors will be sufficient to capture information even through the tinted glass of a closed window.

To protect against theft of information in this way, there are several options. The simplest option is to turn off the hard drive LED. If for some reason this cannot be done, then the protected computer can be positioned so that its LEDs are not visible from any window in the room. And another, more complicated option is to use a special program that accesses the hard disk at random intervals, this, in turn, will create insurmountable interference for any other program trying to transmit information through the hard disk LED.

And, as a last resort, Israeli researchers advise simply covering the LED indicator with a piece of opaque tape. This method is a clear demonstration of how common and simple materials, such as a piece of ordinary electrical tape, can effectively counter the most sophisticated and modern spy technologies.

But really, there's probably nothing to worry about. Computers with default Windows settings do this all the time. Although, of course, the possibility of infection cannot be ruled out, so it will not hurt to check the system with an antivirus for your own peace of mind.

The computer politely waits for its turn

In fact, the computer does not try to do nasty things secretly from the owner. On the contrary, he tries to be smart and polite. Windows needs to run a variety of service tasks in the background, and the system patiently waits for idle time (that is, the user leaves) to run them. This ensures that computer resources are not wasted on extraneous matters when the user needs them to work. If the system is being actively used, background housekeeping processes are suspended so as not to degrade performance.

So it's not a figment of the imagination: Windows is really waiting for idle time to start maintenance. And when the user comes back, service tasks usually stop, so it's usually impossible to figure out why the hard disk activity indicator blinked when idle. The Windows Scheduler gives you the ability to set the task to run exclusively during idle times, and many tasks are performed this way.

What is the computer doing when idle?

But what exactly is the computer doing in the background? The specific set of tasks depends on the system settings and installed programs, but the most common options can be listed.

File indexing. All modern operating systems are equipped with a file indexing function. They check each file (including its contents) and create a database that then instantly returns results when searched. For search to work, the indexing service must regularly check for file changes, and this may explain hard disk activity when idle.

Disk Defragmenter. In the days of Windows 98, you had to close all other programs to successfully defragment your hard drive. Modern versions of Windows defrag automatically in the background, but only when idle.

Scheduled antivirus scanning. Many antivirus programs and other security tools are set by default to automatically scan your system on a regular basis. Perhaps the activity of the hard drive is due to the fact that the antivirus is just checking the files stored on it.

Backup. If automatic backup is enabled (and it should be enabled!), hard disk activity may be caused by the file backup process.

Automatic update. Windows itself and many programs such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox have an automatic update feature. If the computer is busy with something when idle, it is quite possible that it is just downloading and installing updates.

Of course, this is by no means a complete list. There can be an infinite number of options, depending on the specific set of installed programs. For example, if the Steam client is open in the background and an update has just been released for one of the games, the hard disk activity may be due to the download and installation of this update. File download programs, such as BitTorrent clients, can also cause disk activity.

How to find out what programs are using the disk when idle

In theory, everything is clear, but how to find out what the computer does in practice? First of all, if there is a suspicion of infection, it is worth scanning the system with a reliable antivirus, not relying solely on built-in tools. But if you just want to track disk activity, you can do that too.

You can find out which processes are using the disk using the Task Manager and Resource Monitor built into Windows. This is especially true if the disk activity indicator is constantly blinking, and the computer's performance has dropped for some reason.

To open the Task Manager, right-click on the taskbar and select Task Manager or press the ++ keys. In Windows 8, disk usage is displayed right in the Task Manager - you can click on the "Disk" column to sort processes by this parameter and see which one uses the disk the most.

Windows 7 does not have this option, so you need to open the Performance tab and click the Open Resource Monitor link. In the Resource Monitor window, go to the "Disk" tab - and you will see a list of processes that can be sorted by the degree of disk load. By the way, in Windows 8 / 8.1, the Resource Monitor also gives much more information than the Task Manager.

To track disk activity over time, you can use the Process Monitor program from SysInternals, a developer of useful utilities that advanced Windows users love so much. You can start Process Monitor and leave it running during downtime. Then, returning to the computer, you can see which processes used the hard drive in your absence.

Process Monitor logs any activity, but you can use the buttons on the panel to filter the list so that only file system-related events are displayed. For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that disk activity is caused by file indexing.

Process Monitor is good because it can show past activity. Even if a process stops using the disk or terminates altogether, information about it remains in the log. But it is hardly worth using this utility all the time, because event logging also creates a load on the system and, as a result, reduces performance. It should also be understood that Process Monitor keeps an event log only while it is running: if you start it after a surge in hard disk activity, it will no longer be possible to find out what exactly caused it.

visibility 63 views

Many have long dreamed of doing something like that with their computer (paint, highlight, cut through the window :-)). And everyone wants everything to turn out beautifully, simply and, most importantly, safely - after all, it is fear that usually repels beginners from thinking about modding their camper! In this article, I would like to offer you ALL IN ONE! The mod that I will describe is simple and almost absolutely safe to implement and, importantly, the beauty and functionality will simply amaze everyone around you and will undoubtedly increase your rating. And I want to talk about the hard drive loading indicator, or to be more precise, about its modernization. So, while looking at various MODs on thematic sites, I somehow came across a fairly simple and effective home-made device for a PC - an HDD loading indicator.

100% of computers are equipped with a conventional hard drive operation indicator based on a single LED. I propose to expand the possibilities and add spectacularity to a seemingly ordinary indicator. The device variant discussed below will no longer consist of one, but of 10 LEDs! Interested? Then we move on.

Principle of operation

As you know, a lot of wires stretch from the motherboard towards the front panel of the PC (power indicator, hard drive loading, reset, on / off, etc.) For more information regarding the location and number of wires, as well as their polarity, I strongly recommend that you look into mom manual!!! In our case, we will be interested in two contacts on the board, signed H.D.D. and LED (Fig. 1a) (depending on the motherboard model).

It is from them that our future indicator will receive data. Currently connected to them is a simple LED on the front of your case. When the system accesses the hard drive, the power to the LED begins to pulsate. If the indicator just glows, the propeller is fully loaded; if it flickers, it is approximately half loaded, etc. Agree, it is somewhat inconvenient, especially for advanced users :-). We will significantly improve the proposed default display system and instead of flickering we will use a number of LEDs up to 10 pcs. The point is that now the degree of access to the hard drive will be determined not by one, but by ten LEDs lined up (Fig. 2).

In principle, no one forbids placing them in any form convenient for you, and the shape of the indicator is limited only by your imagination. The LEDs will light up in turn (you choose the direction yourself), creating the effect of a jumping column. Our indicator will have two modes of operation: 1) the LEDs light up in turn, and when fully loaded, the entire row lights up; 2) the LEDs light up one by one, that is, instead of a column, a jumping dot is obtained. The device will be powered by 5V, refined, of course, in our PSU. Well, here are the pies :-), let's start assembling ...

materials

For complete happiness, we need the following materials:

• chip - LM3914(a);
• four resistors - 3.3 kΩ, 10 kΩ, 470 ohm, 330 ohm (all at 0.25 W);
• capacitor - 220 uF at 25V (not necessarily 25V, but not less, but the capacitance will affect the reaction speed of the indicator);
• optocoupler - 4N2x (4N25, 4N26, 4N28 or TIL111);
• ten LEDs (preferably super-bright and different colors, experience has shown that two are better: 7–8 of one and 3–2 of the other);
• two panels: for 18 and 6 legs (required to protect the microcircuit and optocoupler from possible overheating with a soldering iron);
• mini-switch, jumper (to select the indicator mode);
• molex MAMA (Fig. 1b) (we need only two contacts: red and black, it is better to cut off the rest);
• connector for connecting the indicator to the mother (Fig. 1a) (cut off from the old indicator);
• 10-wire cable with connectors MALE, MAMA (Exclusively for the convenience of connection, so as not to mess with separate wires);
• frame;
• textolite, ferric chloride, flux, tin, rosin, nail polish :-), connecting wires about 50 cm (standard set of a young soldering iron lover :-));
• Pryamyje Ruki - 2 pcs. (Without this, the assembly does not start!).

All of the above is easily found on the local radio market, except for the last item.

The most expensive element is mikruha - about 6-8 UAH, the rest is 0.3-2 UAH.

I think you can buy a dead flopik there without any problems. As for textolite and ferric chloride: there is an opportunity and desire - be sure to buy (about 10 UAH), otherwise you will have to suffer with cardboard and wires! Personally, for verification, I first assembled it on cardboard, and only then I bought textolite. In principle, it makes no sense for you to do this, since it has been checked - there are no viruses :-)!

Step 1. It is simply not possible to describe drawing, drilling, etching and soldering in this article, we will proceed from the fact that you already know all this or you can ask someone. The diagram of our indicator is shown in fig. 3 (from the side of the legs).

Step 2. First, carefully solder all the necessary components (Fig. 4).

Step 3. After that, you need to decide where the main indicator board will be located, since the length of the wires to the motherboard, power supply and cable to the LEDs will depend on this! Personally, I used an old floppy drive (3.5″) (Fig. 5).

Step 4. Having pulled out all the stuffing and removed the front panel, we get an excellent case for our device. The advantage of this solution is that such a case is very easy to fix inside the system unit, the minus is that it is completely metal, and this is fraught with interaction with the 5V power supply from the PSU! That's exactly why we need varnish - to cover the surface of the board and isolate it from the metal case, to be sure, you can pack it in a small plastic or plastic bag. Of course, in the absence of an old drive, you can use something else (anyhow it fit into the system unit :-)), or, at your own peril and risk, fix the board without a case (100% isolation!) Since my whole circuit was located in close proximity to LEDs, the cable length was about 10 cm, power wires - no more than 5 cm (two pairs of wires come from the molex: 12V and 5V-red and black, we need the latter (Fig. 1b)), to the motherboard - about 20 cm.

Step 5. Now solder the pre-measured wires. The indicator is ready!

Step 6. To check, it is necessary to close contacts 1 and 2 of the optocoupler, if everything is assembled correctly, then the entire chain of LEDs will light up or only the last one (depending on the state of the jumper). If, when connected to a PC, nothing works the first time, we try to turn the HDD LED connector on the mother (it will not get worse). I attached the board with LEDs to the drive with hot glue. My indicator is located in the 3.5″ bay, below the drive, where I specially cut out an oval window in the blank and covered it with transparent plastic from the CD box (Fig. 6).

That's basically it. With a small investment of time and money, we get a pretty good and, most importantly, effective indicator.

One LED is used to indicate the loading of IDE disks, which is hardly very informative. I got tired of evaluating the download "by brightness" and I made a scale:

The circuit can also be implemented in an integrated design, but I wanted to achieve a smooth and soft indication, which is difficult to obtain with ready-made microcircuits. However, I invented the voltage-to-position converter itself a long time ago and it showed very good results in level indicators.

Schema comment

Relatively speaking, the circuit consists of two nodes - a circuit for averaging disk access pulses on R27, R26, D1, R28, R29, C1, C2, Q13 and a voltage-to-position converter on the remaining elements.

The circuit does not need any adjustment, only the resistor R26 must be set to 100% with constant access to the disk. The circuit R24, R25, R11, Q11 sets the background current in the absence of a signal. If it is necessary that in the absence of a signal there is a backlight of the last segment or vice versa, you need to slightly change the value of the resistor R24 ​​or R25.

The printed circuit board was not divorced - I used a "one-hole" breadboard and SMD components, everything took up very little space, a little more than the indicator itself. The circuit is powered by +5V, pin P1 must be connected instead of or together with "HDD LED". If you confuse and stick the wrong output "HDD LED" nothing will happen, there will simply be no indication.

Transistors Q1-Q12 - any npn, you can put KT315B, transistor Q13 - pnp, you can put KT361B. Any letters, but B / G have more amplification. Resistors R1-R10 set the brightness, if you find it too faded or bright, they must be changed accordingly. An important point - to maintain balance in the circuit, when changing the resistors R1-R10, it is also necessary to change the resistor R22 so that the ratio R1 / R22 is constant.

Diode - any small silicon, for example KD522.

You can use any LEDs, but I really liked the kingbright 7 + 3 assembly - a good combination, good brightness and very inexpensive, discrete LEDs would cost no less.

If necessary, the number of segments in the scale can be painlessly reduced even to five, because non-discrete indication is used and there are transitions between digits. For example, such a scale indicated the signal level with only five LEDs, and this was quite enough. With a decrease or increase in the number of discharges, it is important to adjust the value of the resistor R22 so that the voltage across it when the scale is fully on is the same. For example, for seven LEDs it should be increased to 22*10/7=30Om.

There are no special requirements for capacitors, you can put any on any voltage.

Choice of scale ignition dynamics

The first option showed that a very dynamic or very slow indication is not as informative as we would like. Different on / off characteristics can be obtained by slightly adjusting the above circuit:

1. slow on and off.

   To do this, short C2. The on time is equal to the off time and is about 4 seconds.

2. quick on and off.

   To do this, short C1 and remove R29. In this case, each access to the disk will be displayed.

3. fast on and slow off.

   To do this, short C2 and reduce the value of R28 to 10KOm. In this case, the scale will react very energetically to each appeal, and after it will gradually fall off. The option is good, but I liked the fourth one better.

4. a combination of the first and second options.

   Actually, this is an option and is drawn on the diagram. Resistor R29 can change the ratio of dynamic and average scale response. The diagram indicates 33KOm, which corresponds to three LEDs for dynamic indication and seven LEDs for averaging.

5. simultaneous indication of both dynamic and average indication.