hard drive lights

are there kits/bays that support showing hard drive lights for more than
one hard drive?

had trouble coming up with key words for this topic in gooogle.
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Dilbert Firestorm

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dilbert firestorm wrote:
are there kits/bays that support showing hard drive lights for more than
one hard drive?

had trouble coming up with key words for this topic in gooogle.

If you find any, some of us would like to buy one :-)

*******

http://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/...y_Att achment)

"Pin 11 can function for staggered spinup, activity indication,
or nothing. Staggered spinup is used to prevent many drives
from spinning up simultaneously, as this may draw too much
power. Activity is an indication of whether the drive is busy,
and is intended to give feedback to the user through a LED."

Pin 11 is on the *power* cable, not the data cable. The power
cable doesn't go to the motherboard. There is no access to the
signal. Instead, the SATA controller in the Southbridge can
generate a pseudo-activity indication.

In the past, I've found no evidence that anyone uses pin 11.
But on the other hand, I don't review server setups with 25
drives sitting in 25 bays. It's possible server designs
access that signal for monitoring purposes, and I'd
never know.

*******

On the IDE ribbon cable, pin 39 is the active# signal.
It is grounded by the drive, when the drive is active.
I don't know what the current sinking limit is on the
open collector disk drive output signal. Since the
IDE cable terminates on the motherboard, the motherboard
can combine the active_low signals from all four drives,
and make one blinking LED from it.

It would require cutting wire 39, and extracting a
separate signal from each drive, to make a separate
output for each drive. The cable joins the signals
together, and so the wiring provided by the cable
would need to be modified. Easily done by a company
wishing to make a few bucks.

*******

I checked a SCSI drive enclosure here, and the
activity LED is driven from a disk drive output pair
on the controller board. So for once, they took
the LED drive seriously. For the rest, it's more
of a joke.

Paul

dilbert firestorm laid this down on his screen :
are there kits/bays that support showing hard drive lights for more than one
hard drive?

had trouble coming up with key words for this topic in gooogle.

http://download.cnet.com/Free-HDD-LE...-75450106.html

Any good?

On 2015-07-30 10:25, Steve Hough
wrote:

dilbert firestorm laid this down on his screen :

are there kits/bays that support showing hard drive lights for more
than one hard drive?

http://download.cnet.com/Free-HDD-LE...-75450106.html

Any good?

I tried it just now. Works as advertised.

Grab it from here, not from CNET:
http://www.myportablesoftware.com/freehddled.aspx

- You can reduce the poll time to 10ms for best results.
- Has a tiny window with each drive shown, and also a tray icon.
- Window has a DONATE label until you register.
- You can hide the window.

The really cool part is that it can flash the ScrollLock key, however,
this has been removed in the latest v2.x versions (look for v1.98 with
google, I was able to find it).

Downsides:

It's a DOTNET app, so it takes a lot of ram for what it does. Also, if
you install 1.98 it will nag you about updating to v2 every time it
starts, and if blocked with a firewall, it will keep trying to check for
updates every 5m, and will fill a log with errors. It also tries to
access www.google-analytics.com for some reason. And finally, it's a bit
slow to start, and makes current window inactive.

There is another one which does not flash ScrollLock called WinLED:
https://www.pierschel.com/en/software-blog/20-winled-en

This one is much simpler; takes about 1/2 the RAM of FreeHDDLed (but
it's still a DOTNET app). No window, no configurable poll time. Very
fast startup.

That's it.
Best Regards,

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! (o o) Member-+-David-Suzuki-Fdn/EFF/Red+Cross/Planetary-Society-+-
oO-( )-Oo Can i yell "Movie!" in a crowded firehouse?

On 7/30/2015 8:20 PM, B00ze wrote:
On 2015-07-30 10:25, Steve Hough
wrote:

dilbert firestorm laid this down on his screen :

are there kits/bays that support showing hard drive lights for more
than one hard drive?

http://download.cnet.com/Free-HDD-LE...-75450106.html

Any good?

I tried it just now. Works as advertised.

Grab it from here, not from CNET:
http://www.myportablesoftware.com/freehddled.aspx

- You can reduce the poll time to 10ms for best results.
- Has a tiny window with each drive shown, and also a tray icon.
- Window has a DONATE label until you register.
- You can hide the window.

The really cool part is that it can flash the ScrollLock key, however,
this has been removed in the latest v2.x versions (look for v1.98 with
google, I was able to find it).

Downsides:

It's a DOTNET app, so it takes a lot of ram for what it does. Also, if
you install 1.98 it will nag you about updating to v2 every time it
starts, and if blocked with a firewall, it will keep trying to check for
updates every 5m, and will fill a log with errors. It also tries to
access www.google-analytics.com for some reason. And finally, it's a bit
slow to start, and makes current window inactive.

There is another one which does not flash ScrollLock called WinLED:
https://www.pierschel.com/en/software-blog/20-winled-en

This one is much simpler; takes about 1/2 the RAM of FreeHDDLed (but
it's still a DOTNET app). No window, no configurable poll time. Very
fast startup.

That's it.
Best Regards,


interesting software solution.

but its hardware solution I'm looking for.



--
Dilbert Firestorm

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On Fri, 31 Jul 2015 08:34:19 -0500, dilbert firestorm
wrote:

interesting software solution.

but its hardware solution I'm looking for.

You'd need HDD controller sensing logic tied not to just data, as case
LED activity is relayed from the MB, but further refined to the source
of the data activity. Not a problem if only anybody wanted it in a
hardwired configuration;- even software solutions don't concern
themselves past general streaming, regardless the disc(s) interaction.

On 7/31/2015 9:50 AM, Flasherly wrote:
On Fri, 31 Jul 2015 08:34:19 -0500, dilbert firestorm
wrote:

interesting software solution.

but its hardware solution I'm looking for.

You'd need HDD controller sensing logic tied not to just data, as case
LED activity is relayed from the MB, but further refined to the source
of the data activity. Not a problem if only anybody wanted it in a
hardwired configuration;- even software solutions don't concern
themselves past general streaming, regardless the disc(s) interaction.


that setup is kinda of useless if you have more than 1 hard drive.

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Dilbert Firestorm

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On 7/30/2015 6:23 AM, Paul wrote:
dilbert firestorm wrote:
are there kits/bays that support showing hard drive lights for more
than one hard drive?

had trouble coming up with key words for this topic in gooogle.

If you find any, some of us would like to buy one :-)

heres one...

it has one one pin set up for HDD tho.

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/76...4c17s286#blank

this one has one if you have a bunch of drives.
http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82E16817121405

looks like I'll have to take a power drill to the front panel bezel and
put holes in it and plug leds in it. problem with it, it'll stick out
like a sore thumb.
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On Fri, 31 Jul 2015 20:58:26 -0500, dilbert firestorm
wrote:

that setup is kinda of useless if you have more than 1 hard drive.

Yep. Sort of like having two steering wheels in car, except it's not
a commercial airplane. I can't get any (sensor) readings on some of
my drives, running from aftermarket controllers in PCI slots. (Some
such boards though will offer a corner pinout for LED activity;- just
not mine. . .neither that it matters much to me.)

Probably port addressing low-level BIOS routings, MB builders spec-out
for a 3rd party's implementation (AWARD, AMI, and such). A desktop
program emulating a hard drive activity light, for instance, has to be
regularly updated for new MBs and a port of address to poll for sensor
activity. Should be physically located at the same BIOS screen, I'd
imagine, for reviewing temperatures located on System Health.

On 7/30/2015 5:11 AM, dilbert firestorm wrote:
are there kits/bays that support showing hard drive lights for more than
one hard drive?

had trouble coming up with key words for this topic in gooogle.

evidently.. I was using the wrong terminology. I was using bezel, face
plate, etc... in my search.

apparently, they are called filler panels or filler pan or filler covers
or filler plate. everybodys got different names for them.

if you (newbies) don't know what they are, they are a removable plastic
part that you remove from the external drive bays of a computer case
when you add in a DVD drive or floppy drive for example. it comes in 2
versions, 5.25" & 3.5" plates or pans.

this one here comes close. too many holes tho.
https://www.google.com/shopping/prod...DoqQyQSn_5GQAw

I did have a couple of filler plates/pans that had one hole for HDD
leds. these things usually came with some hard drive. I guess they
stopped doing that with the newer hard drives. I know it did come with
the hard drive brackets and had to buy them if the drive you purchased
didn't include brackets. the led wiring was also part of that package.

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Dilbert Firestorm

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