Harddisk measuring

[Roger Grosswiler]

Hi,

i had to setup my fc2 box because of a hd crashed. after installing my
new, all went well - except the busy light of the harddisk now burns
permanently. As response from the supplier i got: this might happen, new
hd's use 3.3V instead of 5V, so if you motherboard not recognizing it,
it is no problem - but the new hd is 5V either - they should know, as i
sent them models, serialnumbers and all of it - another example for a
helpdesk not really caring about the problems of their customers and
just replying without a good investigation before.

I know, here i am in good hands.

so, i expect that even if the busy lamp burns permanently, the ide-disk
doesn't turn fulltime. it's just the lamp. so perhaps some pins at the
disk are a kind of weird.

i look now for a tool, that measures rpms of the ide-disk, without doing
benchmarks. so i could see, if no i/o-operation is going on the speed
should be 0, and if some i/o-operation going on the speed of the disk.

i was searching for days now in internet and found for win many toosl
using s.m.a.r.t - this tells start/stop  but almost in % and doesnt
really help me.

why this damn light is disturbing me? i use a laptop - if this hd
doesn't stop spinning, i don't have so much battery-lifetime, thats all.

so, does somebody know a tool, where i can measure the rpm's? it should
really be some kind of daemon or whatever, that just measures the actual
speed of the harddisk.

thanks a lot.
Roger