Adding a SATA HDD LED

[DragonMaster]

My SATA controller has no HDD LED connector an I'm planning to add a SATA HDD LED sometimes(My HDD is too silent). I found the SATA connector pinout and I think that I could send the receive and transmit signal to a 7407 which will send the signal to 2 different LEDs. Do you think it will work?

 

[ctardi]

Just out of curiosity, what is the point of hdd lights?

 

[DragonMaster]

Knowing when it works. I can't hear my HDD because it's making less noise than a couple of ~29dB fan. It's pretty useful when you wait for a long time and you don't know if the computer crashed or not.

I found that SATA use this spec:
http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_RS644.html
that means a 7407 will not work. Maybe I could drive some little transistors on the signal to amplify the 3.8mA 250mV signal.

I will have one LED for read and one for write.

 

[Magura]

Just out of curiosity, what is the point of hdd lights?

Run windows for a couple of days and you will know

Magura

 

[DragonMaster]

Especially with Windows 2000, which works sooo good with SATA.
Sometimes, something unknown happened during last shutdown and there's a blank screen for 5 minutes. You just don't know what happens. Or if a game stops. You like to know if it's loaking or not.

 

[ctardi]

Ahh.

 

[mikeematic]

why dont you use some software hdd led?
hddled for example, or hard disk led

 

[vdi_nenna]

I've seen this done on SCSI drives. The maker tells you which pins on the drive to connect the LED. (10k Cheetah SCSI)

Which SATA drive and controller do you have? Maybe we can track down some documentation for the devices and see if they recommend a place to tap an LED off of the drive or controller.

Vince

 

[vdi_nenna]

Yep, you can definitley do this on SCSI:

[1]The drive has a 2.2K ohm resistor in series with this LED driver. Tie the minus side of an external high-efficiency
LED (i.e., 2ma) to this pin. Connect the plus side of the LED to +5V.[2]An external current-limiting resistor is required when connecting an LED to this pin. The minus side of the resistor/LED combination is connected to this pin. Connect the plus side to +5V. [3]Jumper storage location (across pins 2 and 4).Figure 15. LED indicator connector

SATA does borrow technology from SCSI so maybe you can do the same as describe above, but for your drive.

Does your drive have pin outs?

 

[DragonMaster]

Does your drive have pin outs?
Only a SATA power, molex power and SATA signal connector. There are also jumpers for factory test and spread spectrum but that's all.

Drive is Western Digital WD800JD

WD doesn't talk about SATA LED connectors.

What I found is that Silicon Image(The SATA chipset on my PCI card) has documentation for the SATA LED pins, but SMD ICs are hard to solder and I have to use the complicated version because my add-on card uses a flash rom for the BIOS. Also, to use the complicated version, they talk about software enabling but I use the reference drivers so I don't think there's a problem here.