# Hard disk activity indicator.



## TellarHK (Aug 30, 2002)

I had, way back on 10.0.0.4 a copy of a little program that did nothing but flash an indicator on the upper left corner of the menu bar when the disk was being accessed, great for iBook use.  I have no idea what this program was called, or whether it'll work on Jaguar.  Anyone know anything?


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## GrBear (Aug 31, 2002)

> _Originally posted by TellarHK _
> *I had, way back on 10.0.0.4 a copy of a little program that did nothing but flash an indicator on the upper left corner of the menu bar when the disk was being accessed, great for iBook use.  I have no idea what this program was called, or whether it'll work on Jaguar.  Anyone know anything? *


Yeah - That's one thing I've always thought strange about the Mac, the fact that there's no way of knowing if the hard drive is being accessed.  Norton Utilities had an extension for OS 9 (and older) that would do it, but I haven't seen anything for OS X.


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## chabig (Aug 31, 2002)

I've never understood why PC users think it's important to know that the hard drive is working. If it's not, it should be obvious by the way the machine behaves. And when I suspect something is fishy and I really do want to know, I just put my ear near the hard drive. I've been able to hear the hard drive on every machine I've ever owned.

Chris


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## GrBear (Aug 31, 2002)

> _Originally posted by chabig _
> *I've never understood why PC users think it's important to know that the hard drive is working.*


There are times when you don't know if a program stopped responding or if it's actually doing something.. hard drive activity tends to assist in the diagnosis.  I'm glad you have a noisy enough hard drive that you can hear the heads moving and such, some of us are misfortunate enough to have quiet drives.


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## TellarHK (Aug 31, 2002)

I have an iBook with a rather low amount of RAM, and it's nice to have a bit more of a feeling just when my machine is needing to swap or load information in the background.  It's also, definitely, useful for telling when my machine's just busy, or if it's actually stalled.

The hard drive is so silent, that unless I lean in closely in a quiet room, I have no way of telling.


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## Sogni (Aug 31, 2002)

I just bought a 120 Gig drive and installed it on my Mac...

I'm moving everything off of two 40Gig drives and a few more gigs over the network from a Windows machine...

I am browsing the web and listening to iTunes as I do this...

Is it still copying? Did the copying fail? I don't know! I can't tell by just glancing at a light or at the screen without moving/hiding opened windows/programs! 

I thought I heard something! Let me look... after moving hiding windows/programs I can finally see the copy status... still aways to go... ok back to what I was doing...

Repeat... a couple of times until copy is complete.

ANOYING AS HECK!!! ARGH!!!!

At least while I'm copying over the network I can look at my Router's activity lights to know that the file copy is still going... 
I WANT THIS FEATURE ON MY MAC!!! Am I REALLY asking for TOO much? 

That's really the ONLY thing that drives me nuts on Macs (yeah, I've been called a Control Freak a few times when it comes to computers), other than that - I love my Mac!


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## chabig (Aug 31, 2002)

OK. I can see that there is a demand for some sort of hard drive activity indicator.

<At least while I'm copying over the network I can look at my Router's activity lights to know that the file copy is still going... 
I WANT THIS FEATURE ON MY MAC!!! Am I REALLY asking for TOO much? >

There used to be a program to do this on the Mac. I suspect someone could write one for OS X.

Chris


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## Sogni (Sep 1, 2002)

When I first bought my Mac a bit over a year ago, it originally had a red pixel that blinked with hard drive activity at the upper left-most pixel of the scren...

1 pixel...

That's all I want!

I haven't seen it since  (no idea what it was called either) - I'm guess it's on the Restore CD but I'll be damned if I'm going to run the restore CD on my Mac now... not to mention OS9! 

Norton used to have an icon that flashed in System Works 1.0 but no mention of it for the OSX verion of System Works 2.0...


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## rhunley (Mar 20, 2010)

Check out MenuMeters at http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/

It gives you HDD, Network, CPU, Memory all on the System Menu.  It is more than I wanted, but at least gives you what you need!


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## jbarley (Mar 20, 2010)

Talk about trying to raise the dead.
The post you just offered a possible solution to, was from 8 years ago.


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## DeltaMac (Mar 20, 2010)

Lots of system changes since 2002, eh?
No need for menumeters just to show drive activity.
You can show disk activity in the dock, by making that selection in your Activity Monitor.


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## chittakilla (Aug 27, 2010)

chabig said:


> I've never understood why PC users think it's important to know that the hard drive is working. If it's not, it should be obvious by the way the machine behaves. And when I suspect something is fishy and I really do want to know, I just put my ear near the hard drive. I've been able to hear the hard drive on every machine I've ever owned.
> 
> Chris



Did you seriously think about your reply before you posted it? It is important to see if there is hard drive activity. Putting your ear to your Mac is a way to see if there is hard drive activity, but it is a poor substitute for a simple LED.
I would think a Mac snob like you would be above putting their ear any machine.


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## DeltaMac (Aug 27, 2010)

chittakilla said:


> Did you seriously think about your reply before you posted it?



Did you seriously think a grumpy 8-year-old post is worth complaining about?

Please also notice that the original post actually was answered.

Another take on this - OS X often might be continually reading/writing to the drive, so a drive activity light in actual use would prove to be meaningless. If there's a negative to how OS X works, the hard drive can be used fairly hard - depending on what the system and the apps in use will need.
Even then, the Activity Monitor icon in the dock shows other information than just 'drive activity. It will show a relative measure of how much activity there is at any particular time.....


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## chittakilla (Aug 27, 2010)

DeltaMac said:


> Did you seriously think a grumpy 8-year-old post is worth complaining about?
> 
> Please also notice that the original post actually was answered.
> 
> ...



It was the "PC" part that pissed me off. Thanks for the help/answer.


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## DeltaMac (Aug 27, 2010)

I actually do agree with chabig on that one. I've put my ear to a lot of Macs as a service tech. An LED tells you very little about the function of a hard drive, so I listen to a hard drive - with my ear down on the computer - although usually I'm listening for unusual hard drive sounds. I guess that must look a little odd, eh? That's in addition to any other diag testing that I might do...


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## chittakilla (Aug 30, 2010)

DeltaMac said:


> I actually do agree with chabig on that one. I've put my ear to a lot of Macs as a service tech. An LED tells you very little about the function of a hard drive, so I listen to a hard drive - with my ear down on the computer - although usually I'm listening for unusual hard drive sounds. I guess that must look a little odd, eh? That's in addition to any other diag testing that I might do...



Not at all. I do this as well if I think there is a physical problem with the hard drive.


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