From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Thu, 2/19/2026 8:39 AM, micky wrote:   
   > USB flashdrive light goes on for no apparent reason.   
   >   
   > I have a flash drive with nothing but data, music on it, but when I'm   
   > doing other things totally unrelated, the light in the flash drive goes   
   > on for short periods.  Not a problem but I just want to understand.  Can   
   > you all tell me why the light goes on?   
   >   
      
   Windhawk ? Explorer Patcher ? Clean machine ???   
      
   Process Monitor, Filter set to "Operation is Readfile/Writefile/Createfile",   
   then look to see if a particular partition letter is being accessed.   
      
      https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon   
      
   Not all activity will show up that way, but it's a damn sight easier   
   than using WinDBG. If the system is doing physical layer access (unlikely),   
   then that may not show up.   
      
   We used to see this behavior on older Windows. If you had a DVD   
   in the drive, it would "do a sniff" of J: every once in a while.   
   In some cases, people would see sniffing once a second. There   
   is no particular reason this should be going on today, unless   
   you have configured Windows Defender to do this (DevMode?).   
      
   They don't even tell you here, whether enabling that causes   
   USB sticks to be scanned. I have not particularly noticed my   
   8GB stick being scanned (the one with the very nice LED), but   
   on the other hand, I have seen my fair share of unnecessary   
   defender yellow warnings on my D: drive.   
      
   https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/advanced-settings/developer-mode   
      
      Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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