I have a new install of Windows Server 2008 R2 64 bit on a new Dell R410 with four hard drives setup in a Raid 5. SQL 2008 R2 is also installed as is our new Destiny library system software. The status lights on all four of the drives show nearly constant read/write activity by very rapid flashing. I have consulted with Dell; they had me download and run a variety of hardware diagnostic utilities and all of them indicated that the hardware was perfect. They suggested that there may be a setting in the Windows Server 2008 that is causing the constant hard drive access activity --possibly, incorrectly configured logging activity. If the constant activity is "normal" than I have some fear of premature hard drive failure as a result of the constant activity. I will not move our library database to our new Destiny library system software package on the server until I feel that comfortable that the behavior is either completely normal --as Dell says it might be-- or the constant hard drive access activity is brought under control. (For reference, I have a similar setup on a Dell R510 running as a web server and the hard drive access lights blink at most every several seconds --not constantly.)

Maybe this will help. It's probably normal and I wouldn't worry about it too much. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896646 Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows]

Did you ever get this resolved? I'm having the same problem with a Dell R410 too. I've had it for roughly a year and a half and it was fine. I needed to repurpose it so I reformatted it and then the hard drive lights started constantly flashing. Right now it is a completely fresh install. I have not installed anything except for Windows 2008 x64 and the drivers from Dell. I've looked at perfmon, diskmon and resource monitor and I can see something is going on but it looks to always be something different. Ryan

Did you get a solution? We are having the same problem here R410, 2008 R2, constant access to HDs. We have 15 or so more servers that are newer, exact same config, no crazy disk activity.