Hard drive led is always on?

[imported_fifthlake]

Hello,

I recently put together a few machines using the same components. On one of the machines the hard drive led stays lit even if I shut down (the light does go out if I flip the power switch on the back off). The brightness of the light is less than when it is accessing data, but it?s always on. I only have one hard drive on the cable (IDE) with the jumper set to "cable select" on the drive. The drive is connected to the end of the cable, not the middle. I switched cases and the result is the same.

Components:
Abit NF8-V2 mb
Seagate Barracuda 120GB Ultra ATA

Can anyone help? Is the motherboard defective?

 

[Bassyhead]

Try swapping out the hard drive in the problematic machine with a different one (perhaps one from your other machines) and see what happens. I'm assuming everything else works alright other than the LED staying lit. The motherboard controls the status of the LED depending on IDE traffic, so if I had to guess perhaps something is up with the board.

 

[Electric Amish]

Did you get your 2-pin HD motherboard header on backwards?

Try reversing it on the motherboard.

 

[imported_fifthlake]

Everything else is working great, including the hard drive. I checked the two pin connector and it is on correctly. I will try a different hard drive later tonight. Could it be the ribbon cable? Is this is really a problem or am I being fussy?

 

[Jeff7]

Could it just be a result of power getting through the motherboard, via the always-on ATX power supply? Some motherboards have a light on them that stays on the entire time that they are receiving any power at all. Maybe some of that is getting into the HDD LED circuit.

 

[Jojo7]

I bet Jeff7 is right. The light on the board is coming through the hdd hole on the case.

 

[imported_fifthlake]

Thanks for the help. Jeff7 - I swaped the MB and that appeared to be it.