What is the purpose of the white LED on the pidrive, and why is it flashing every second?
drive activity light ? like what is found on 99% of external hdds
I don’t think so, but maybe. It blinks at about 1Hz until the drive is mounted, then starts blinking faster and continuously (but still at a steady rate, not like a drive access light). I thought perhaps someone from wdlabs could say what the difference blinking rates are supposed to indicate, as well as what to do to make it stop doing that since it’s pretty annoyingly bright. Also, pidrive is not an external drive.
mjrice wrote:
I don’t think so, but maybe. It blinks at about 1Hz until the drive is mounted, then starts blinking faster and continuously (but still at a steady rate, not like a drive access light). I thought perhaps someone from wdlabs could say what the difference blinking rates are supposed to indicate, as well as what to do to make it stop doing that since it’s pretty annoyingly bright. Also, pidrive is not an external drive.
Hi mjrice!
The white LED is indeed a drive activity indicator. On drives with enclosures (e.g. My Passport), the LED is usually filtered through a piece of plastic so it’s not so blindingly bright. Worst case, you can stick a piece of electrical tape over it so it doesn’t blind you :wink:
Normally, when the LED is blinking quickly or remains on, it’s due to any kind of filesystem or disk activity. For example, aside from explicit user activity, maybe your OS is doing some background indexing, or writing to logs, or loading background applications. It’s also normal for the drive to go through a flurry of activity when initially mounted.
However, to answer your question: if the drive ISN’T spinning (which you can verify by holding in your hand or listening closely) and the LED is still blinking slowly, it means the drive is in a low-power “sleep” mode. I suppose it’s just a way to let you know the drive is still alive.
Hope that helps!
Ok, thank’s for the reply. I’ll probably get that electrical tape out, then. I’ve got the drive in a (mostly opaque) acrylic enclosure, and the whole thing lights up when that led is active! It is a little distracting when in use as a media center.
In case it helps anybody using linux who formatted the pidrive using ext4:
For me, the constant rapid (<1second) flashing white LED on the pidrive (when first formatted ext4; only when mounted; and with no apparent disk activity) seemed to be ext4lazyinit running, as shown by ‘iotop’ and explained well by somebody else here:
http://www.hecticgeek.com/2015/01/ext4-external-hard-disk-busy-at-idle-fix/
( I expect the flashing would have eventually stopped if I had left ext4lazyinit for long enough, so reformatting is presumably not justified [and obviously destroys all data etc …]. However, having reformatted [using -E lazy_itable_init=0,lazy_journal_init=0] and remounted, the bright white LED is on continuously; only flashes rapidly when the disk is in use; and then eventually seems to flash slowly (aprox 1-2 seconds) after a period of inactivity. )
A suggestion to the WDLabs team:
On any future revisions or new products in this line, please put a header jumper with removable shunt in line with the LED, so users who don’t want it wasting power or blinding them could disable it simply and without damaging the drive. The additional manufacturing cost should be negligible.
My LED is on 99-100 of the time. Perhaps the designers and programmers should go to back to Blink-LED-101 and learn about sinking and sourcing and invert the IO driving the LED.
Hey guys.
We really do appreciate the feedback. Your suggestions and concerns will be forwarded to the appropriate team.
@Roy_Sutton, is your drive in high activity most of the time if the light is ON almost 100% of the time you have the Pi powered up?
Thanks,
CK_WD
Hi, cpu is idle <1% no tasks but top running from 1st VC and LED is on
steady.
Thanks
Roy
What about the drive activity? Have you monitored it to see if there’s anything unusual or if it’s active while the LED is constantly ON?
From autologin command line, nothing running, no X, led is on 25 sec, 2
blinks off and repeats.
Is now in Pi2B+ Debian, official Pi3 PS,
Well, it’s really unfortunate that this is so bothersome. 
However it seems like the drive is working properly (unless you’ve had any issues with it). The only thing I can do in this case is to address your feedback about the LED light in general towards the appropriate team.
OK then, how about the constant buzzing. Are you capable of fixing anything?
With your layoffs you realize that the good people are gone!
What kind of buzzing sound. This is the first I hear about the issue.
If there’s a problem with the drive itself, the basic troubleshooting steps apply in this situation: backup important data, try the HDD with a different device and/or cables to see if the same thing happens. Test it for errors (you can use DLG if you go with a Windows computer) - How to test a drive for problems using Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows
Please let me know how everything goes.
