H.D.D light remains lit and wont shut off. help!

[glowingnissan07]

1.3 GHz AMD Duron

256 MB RAM

3 GB hard disk (contains wanted old PC files [Win98 upgrade])

15.4 GB hard disk (contains XP only)

40.0 GB hard disk (want to format and use for storage)

as soon as i installed XP on my 15.4 hard disk, the H.D.D. light turned on, which i thought was natural cuz after all, i was installed a pretty big OS.
but once i started using the OS, it stays on. my CPU is not being overloaded either, i checked its usage its functioning normally around 0 - 12% without any applications running at all.

Why is my H.D.D. LED on 24/7, only on this hard disk? My other hard disk, the 3GB, it works properly.

I called a friend and he said it could be a system cache problem with the hard disk.

The only explanation i can find is PERHAPS that when i installed XP i accidently installed in the NTFS File System on a 15.4 GB Hard drive when i should've installed it on FAT32. If this is the problem, can i go back to FAT32? IF not, what are my options?

This problem doesnt seem to affect too badly on OS performance, but definately on XP bootup and shutdown, which takes a good whole 2 minutes for each.








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another problem, although my Speakers are hooked up correctly, i cant find the device under Device Manager, and i havent been able to use sound. How can i fix this problem? I tried the troubleshooter without much luck.

 

[zephead]

you cannot go from ntfs back to fat 32 without wiping the drive and creating a new partition. you can, however, go from fat32 to ntfs. ntfs is far superior to fat32 and should be used whenever possible, none of your troubles should be caused by ntfs. see if you can acertain that your hdd is actually not active whilst the led is lit. the motherboard will power said led when there is any ide bus activity, so the problem may not be caused by your hard drive at all. additionally, most hard drives have thier own led hookups, and you should use that if you are looking to narrow down your suspected faults.

 

[glowingnissan07]

h.d.d activity check...how?

thanks dude, how can i check for any Hard disk activity?

--(also still need help getting brand new speakers to work)


:darth:

 

[just_a_nobody]

You may have a bad ribbon cable on one of your many HDD. You may also have your HDD led backwards, connected to wrong terminals, or it may just be bad. Try using just one hard drive set up at a time, and see if the led acts up, then add each drive back, and see what happens.

 

[just_a_nobody]

As for your speakers, do you have onboard sound, or a sound card. Do you have the correct sound card drivers? Click on the speaker icon, and see if the speakers are on mute. If you have a sound card, what make and model?

 

[zephead]

if your hdd controller and sound card are integrated into your motherboard, the trouble may be coming from the board itself.