Many users are forced to place their computer cases in strange positions, blocking all the activity lights. But there are also modding cases that tear those lights out at the root, and isolated models that offer no visual indication whatsoever. The “problem” is that solid-state drives are silent, and they don’t transmit feedback about their operation… unless we install something like SSD-LED.
Last year we talked about the HDD Clicker project, which reproduces the sound of classic hard drives in retro computers. The spectacular advance of solid-state drives has turned silent units into the new standard, and although many users enjoy this new “acoustic peace”, others feel that something is missing.
Another common case is the activity LED light that gives up in cheaper cases, and we can’t ignore modding, with projects that remove lights and buttons to optimize aesthetics. The ability to visualize the activity of our drives remains important, and if physical solutions are out of reach, then nothing stops you from using an alternative like SSD-LED.
SSD-LED: An activity indicator for your solid-state drives
The installation process and the final location of its executable are somewhat unusual, but we haven’t found anything strange or malicious. In fact, SSD-LED takes up less than 300 kilobytes on disk, and its only major technical requirement is .NET 4.5 or higher. The most important parameters in its configuration are the activity threshold that adjusts sensitivity (the default of 800 KB/s works very well), the update interval (with a base of 100 milliseconds, I usually use 50), and a secondary field to limit logging to a single SSD.
In the second tab of SSD-LED we find an option to start the program with Windows, and another that lets us change the colors of the indicator. Green represents read operations and red write operations, but SSD-LED can mix colors to better identify the type of activity.
The last update of SSD-LED was published in April and fixes several bugs. Regardless of the simplicity of its icon (it’s still a circle), it certainly fulfills its purpose, doesn’t bother, and doesn’t present conflicts with other apps in the system tray. Link below!
Official site and download: Click here
