SATA disk activity LEDs

[cobito]

Hello. I have a motherboard with an integrated CPU with 4 sata ports and a pcie X1 port. Without knowing the pcie width, I bought a controller with 4 sata ports that comes with pins for pcie X4 activity led that, obviously, is not compatible with the motherboard.

I want to have a led per disk to monitor activity at a glance. I have read that the disk itself has this functionality through the power connector, but I do not want to manipulate either the cable or the connector without having the tools or the experience.

Do you know if there are cables/adapters that already take out these cables? Is there any other option without having to use caddys?

Thank you.

[_Neptunno_]

@cobito, I think this has low demand and you know that the less you search, the harder it is to find. I've searched eBay and I've seen these two adapters that take out the cable for the LED:

• Bytecc SATA-SP118
• Cable With LED

That said, keep in mind that even if you get the cable, in many modern drives pin 11 (the one that gives the light signal) is disabled or does other things. You might find that you connect everything and the LED doesn't blink because the drive doesn't send the signal. Check your drive models carefully just in case.

Another option would be to use a "virtual LED", I don't know if there are more options but I've seen two programs that might be useful:

• DiskMon (Microsoft): It's super lightweight. It puts an icon that blinks green when the drive reads and red when it writes. You can see the activity of each drive separately.

• Activity Indicator: This one is very visual. It allows you to create virtual light bulbs in the taskbar. You can put one for each of its 4 SATA drives and so you know exactly which one is scratching data at any given moment.

I hope this can be useful to you at least to have some idea, it's not something I usually see outside of the caddys in the servers. I've had some experiences with Windows and Linux in server racks, but I don't know much more about this topic either

Best regards!!

[cobito]

@_Neptunno_ Thanks for the links. I didn't even know those cables existed. The only thing that works for me are physical leds because they are headless machines.

Before you wrote the answer, I bought this (it hasn't arrived yet), with which I hope to be able to connect the controller. I'm also taking a risk because there's no 100% certainty that it will work at x1 (according to what I read around, it should), but well. Also, a fifth SATA would save me a USB drive, so it's the solution that best fits what I need. Performance is not a problem because they are mechanical drives.

If I see that it doesn't work either, I'll try with the cables you mentioned.

What I want to do is more on the side of the geek thing than of practical utility but as you say, it's a matter of niche and besides having little variety, the prices are not cheap (50€ a mid-range controller and 6€ each cable... a pass).