Can't say that I've noticed this. I do have a newer gen NVME samsung 960 pro in my z390 mainboard. But I also have 4 other HDDs in the system so if anything there is rarely a time when my HDD led isn't blinking. Probably the most annoying I've noticed is that my HDD activity LED seems to now light in sync with audio playback on some videos, mainly those I stream from youtube. I don't recall that happening with my old system at all.

I will have to look into this DriveGLEAM. What exactly is it for?

I'm using an M.2 SSD (crucial mx500) with it's own (annoyingly orange - I taped over it) LED. It blinks very often and does NOT even closely resemble the pattern I see on my hdd activity LED connected to the motherboard (aorus x570 pro), which almost never blinks. I was just figuring those activity LEDs are for show at this point, since there is always disk activity going on in Windows 7 and above.

Maybe the front panel header is programmed to only flash when the disk reaches a certain sustained level of read or write load? Who knows. Only way to even possibly find out would be to ask a gigabyte rep on another forum, and they would probably think I was crazy 😜

My Samsung Evo 860 M.2 in a M.2 to SATA adapter card works with the case LED just fine. Not eve sure if my main desktop with built-in m.2 has a HD led.

CrossBow777 wrote:

I will have to look into this DriveGLEAM. What exactly is it for?

It's a hard drive activity monitor utility for Windows. Has HDD activity lights in your taskbar etc.

http://www.dirtcellar.net/software.php

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Maybe the front panel header is programmed to only flash when the disk reaches a certain sustained level of read or write load? Who knows. Only way to even possibly find out would be to ask a gigabyte rep on another forum, and they would probably think I was crazy 😜

Yeah man, ASRock support is absolutely the pits. It's a nice board, but I wont even attempt to ask them as every time I have in the past I get very generic answers or none at all.

DosFreak wrote:

My Samsung Evo 860 M.2 in a M.2 to SATA adapter card works with the case LED just fine. Not eve sure if my main desktop with built-in m.2 has a HD led.

That's exactly what I am trying to figure out. Does the HDD LED on the motherboard directly reflect activity from it's built-in M.2 slot or just the SATA controller. It lights up here and there, but randomly and not in sync with the NVME drive. At this point, I am guessing the M.2 slot has no activity LED associated with it. It's not a big deal except I like the aesthetic of the HDD LED activity light.

Welp, my question just got answered by accident. Burning a DVD tonight from my NVME and the HDD LED is solid when the SATA DVD burner is active. So it looks like the HDD LED is strictly tied to the SATA controller on this board. At least I know now.

For what it's worth, the HDD indicator light flashes with disk activity on a Samsung 960 Evo NVMe on both my Asrock X99 and MSI X570 motherboards.

liqmat wrote:

Welp, my question just got answered by accident. Burning a DVD tonight from my NVME and the HDD LED is solid when the SATA DVD burner is active. So it looks like the HDD LED is strictly tied to the SATA controller on this board. At least I know now.

Out of curiosity, you mean that it doesn't stay on if you make a copy of a huge file on the same drive?

Stenzek wrote:

For what it's worth, the HDD indicator light flashes with disk activity on a Samsung 960 Evo NVMe on both my Asrock X99 and MSI X570 motherboards.

Good to know. I'm using a Plextor M9Pe 1TB NVME in the Gen3 M.2 slot and absolutely zero HDD LED activity out of that. The board does have a second Gen2 M.2 slot, but not in use.

konc wrote:

Out of curiosity, you mean that it doesn't stay on if you make a copy of a huge file on the same drive?

It shows zero activity when in use. It's why I grabbed driveGLEAM with its on-screen HDD activity lights in the taskbar. That does show the NVME activity and it chatters constantly with reads and writes. So the case LED is not reflecting that activity coming from the M.2 slot the NVME is plugged into.

Mine shows activity correctly... ASUS Z270-A Prime

SSD is an HP EX950 NVMe connected to M.2 slot