Hello. I've just installed an NEC ND-3500A drive (the only optical drive on my pc) which replaced an old LG cd/rw. This is the only change (hardware or software) that I've made since this 'problem' developed. What's very peculiar is that every time I open the drawer (or close it), forcing the drive to read, the hdd also starts reading (not writing, I would guess) simultaneously! So, the green drive light goes on on the optical drive, and for the very same length of time, the hdd reads too. This also occurs when I run any disc in the optical drive. For any length of time the optical drive is reading, the hdd is also reading!

Is this somehow firmware related? If anyone has experienced this and knows of a resolution, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks for reading.

Well, how do you know the HDD starts to read too? If it´s the LED on front of your PC that shows activity that could also indicate to the optical drive.

By the way, I would always set an optical drive on its own cable and not on the HDD cable if they are both PATA/IDE.

The machine is an 8 year old Dell desktop. The activity of the hdd is activated by the optical drive as I've explained in my original post. The hdd activity light goes on simultaneously with the optical drive activity light, whether the optical drive is reading sporadically, or constantly, the hdd will mimic it.

That's perfectly normal behavior. When you access the hard drive OR the optical drive, the LED is supposed to blink. The LED blinking doesn't mean it's accessing the hard disk, but rather that it's accessing some IDE device (drive activity in general, no matter what device).

Ok, well that's news to me. With the previous optical drive I had installed none of this would occur, ever, and it seems completely unnecessary and will contribute to the wear of the hdd (I could only imagine).

Thanks for the replies.

It's just a blinking light, it won't wear out your hard drive. The optical drive doesn't make the computer access the hard drive, it's just that if you access either one, it will make the light blink. The only thing you're wearing out, is a half cent LED, that has a longer lifespan than the rest of your PC.

Well that's just it, the optical drive is for some reason requesting the hdd to read/write.

It's not an issue of accessing either one, it's strictly an issue of when the optical drive activity light goes on, the hdd activity light mimics it.

As I posted above, my previous optical drive didn't initiate the hdd to do anything like this, ever, and it is rather strange.

The question is, what makes you think your optical drive makes your hard drive read/write data? Just because the LED on your tower blinks?