final thread on this hard drive mess!

[Kevin Fries]

On Wed, 2011-11-30 at 10:59 -0700, Michael Havens wrote:
> I was wondering..... when I boot the computer with the dead drive with
> a live CD the computer accesses the hard drive (at least the HD light
> comes on). Why is this?

The light is actually on the access to the controller, not specifically
the drive.  The system does not know the drive is dead, until it tries
to read it.  Thus the drive light comes on while the OS tries to take
inventory of what resources are available.

Kevin