XPS 8940, SSD light very active

That is LAN activity

There are ZERO HDD lights on the back

@Colorado_scott You are correct, according to the XPS 8940 Setup and Specification, there is a 'Hard-drive activity light' on the back panel. The light is labeled #1 in the picture and the description says the light 'Turns on when the computer reads from or writes to the hard drive'. I assume by hard drive that includes SSDs. If you want to compare the light activity to hard drive activity you could run Task Manager, click on the Performance tab, and then click on Disk 1, Disk 2, etc. depending upon how many disks you have. The Processes tab in Task Manager will also give you an idea of percentage disk activity by application. 

Thanks for verifying there is a HDD light on the back of the 8940.. but I knew that. I did what you mentioned and there is constant activity. I'll post a picture here of a snip in time.. but it's like this all the time.. just don't know if it's normal. Perhaps you can shed some light on this?

These are great ideas - if I didn’t know better I’d think you have done this before!  I’ll try this later today and see what it might uncover. Appreciate your time and knowledge. 

Scott

@Colorado_scott You could also investigate the disk activity using a program called Process Explorer. With Process Explorer you can look at processes and things like CPU utilization, memory utilization, etc. You can use it to look at I/O activity. In the View menu, click Select Columns,  click on the Process I/O tab in the Select Columns window, check both Reads and Writes, then click OK. This will add I/O Reads and I/O Writes columns. If you click on the I/O Reads or I/O Writes column header it will list the processes with the highest number of reads or writes to the top of the process listings. While this program may help identify the processes with the highest disk activity it may not help identify the periodic activity which appears to be a low percentage.

Well Vic.. it was logical.. what I saw when looking at the processes was that several cloud services were running backup files or downloading from my drive to the cloud. The new windows, along with MS Office, seems to want cloud backups all the time. I have enough external drives to cover this so I'm not crazy about that process. All my important files are backed up on local SSD external drives. And.. when you now install Office (I say 'now' as I've just upgraded to the new(er) Office from 2007 - it stores all files on the cloud - at least it wants to be default. I've changed that to local storage. I'll take a look at Process Explorer but I think YOU have helped me solve this concern. Thanks..

sc

Hi, @Colorado_scott 

Just to add to the comments/observations!

The Graphs (from Task Manager) are "Auto-Sizing" - in other words, when there is low-activity level, the Graph magnifies to fill up the Grid, when there is high-activity level, it reduces that magnification.

In your Graph, it is showing a very low level, hence the "apparent-maximum" is ONLY 500 kB/s - it would be significantly higher for high activity levels.

Hence the % activity (shown on the Left) is probably a better representation!

@Colorado_scott  - Don't know why you bothered upgrading to the cloud version of Office. I bet your Office 2007 will install and run perfectly in Win 10 without any of those cloud hassles or risks somebody might see your files.

I'm running Office 2003 on my Win 10 Pro (20H2) PC. It installed easily and runs perfectly. All my files are stored on an internal 1T HDD and backed up on an external USB HDD. Convenient, private, and hassle-free.

@Colorado_scott I am like @RoHe but my version of Office is newer, Office 2013. 

I'm sure that are many that do not realize that some MS OFFICE releases store info on the Cloud. I put Office 2019 on m wives computer.. what a mess.. I did not want anything stored on the Cloud - specifically financial documents. It was not like this with order 'offices' releases from Microsoft. It seems we are in agreement that local storage is safer for us.. other might like the convenience of having files stored in the cloud as they can be accessed from any mobile devices. I can see an advantage to this. 

The cloud may be convenient, except when your internet connection goes down and/or their website is down...

And with a laptop, even if the power goes out , I can still access Office files that are backed up on my USB HDD, at least until the battery runs dry...

I'll also mention that I just read that Cortana - the voice assistant - uses disk activity regularly. I have disabled Cortana as I did not use it much. Just FYI..