Disk Activity Indicator (for short DI) is a flexible hard disk activity indicator which resides in your system tray, near the system clock:
What do you do when your computer reacts slowly to even the simplest commands? You probably look at its hard disk LED to determine if the disk is busy. That is, if you are sitting right next to the machine. But what if you are using a remote connection? No hard disk LED, no quick and simple way to check for suspicious activity. Or, as it happens nowadays, you buy a laptop and it has no HDD LED at all.
DI queries Windows performance counters for any disk activity-related data. Basically, what it does is periodically query specific counters and display the relevant values graphically.
Obviously an LED type display is well-suited for activity data only. However, when dealing with data in different ways, like copying, creating, reading it, a different visualization methods may be needed. Thus DI has several display modes:
- Transfer-based – depends on the actual data transfer – is it mostly read and/or write operations.
- Activity-based – HDD LED-like flickering mode depends on the disk activity – it is basically on or off.
- Load-based – uses device`s utilization in per cent to illuminate the DI`s LED icon accordingly.
- Alternatively the 3rd mode can be similar to how Task Manager shows CPU utilization.
In addition, DI comes with support for Icon Themes. The build-in theme has been especially designed to match Windows 10 system tray icons. If you are designer, or if you simply wish to craft a different icon setup, please refer to the README file for more details and information about icon transparency.
When dealing with remote access protocols (like RDP or ICA) one generally tries to reduce screen updates to a minimum. For that reason the frequency with which DI updates its icon can be selected; e.g. Transfer-based indicator mode updates its icon once per second, while the Load-based indicator can do it up to 50 times per sec.
Although DI can be downloaded as both Windows Setup and Portable ZIP archive, it can be used as a standalone EXE file. No need to install anything. If you run the executable all by itself, it will start with its built-in Icon Theme and will read/store its settings to Windows Registry. Why not using an INI file? Because the data DI stores (local fixed drives) is strictly related to the machine on which it is running; there is no need to move that data to a different machine.
Important Notice: Please be noted that versions 3.0.0 and 3.0.1 of DI does not support Windows XP. Version 3.0.2 however, supports it.
Personal note by the author: During the development of DI, I have stumbled upon Dieter Schmitz`s wonderful DiskLED application, on which DI has been inspired by if speaking performance-wide. Both applications share same idea, although each has its own personality. I have tried to enhance DI further with regards to the user interface, visual presentation and customization of detail.