Activity Indicator

It’s good to have important details in plain sight, especially if they’re dependencies for the activities you perform. This can even mean whether or not caps lock is active, or your CPU is running. In this regard, Activity Indicator wants to show you exactly when data is being written and read from your HDD.

A neat advantage is that you don’t have to go through the effort of pressing a few next buttons to install the application, because it can be used directly from a USB device, even on other computers. Another consequence is that system registries remain intact, thus not affecting the stability of the target PC. However, you do need to make sure .NET Framework is installed.

On launch, the application goes directly to the system tray, with a small prompt letting you know it’s there. You can immediately tell what the new tray icon does, because it acts as a small LED that blinks when HDD activity is detected. In case the default style doesn’t quite tickle your fancy, you might want to access the settings menu.

Structured in tabs, configurations let you manage general information, activity log, and program settings. Info refers to the amount of space used and available, while activity log shows all files that are processed. There’s an option to save the log to file, with a few corresponding parameters, such as time stamp, change, or delete triggers.

Activity Indicator comes with a decent set of visual customization for the blinking indicator. Although you can’t actually pick a color, the set of icons is enough, with an additional slider for blinking intensity.

Moreover, there’s a drop-down menu that lets you choose the target drive to monitor. It can even be used to view activity for connected USB flash drives. In case the tray LED isn’t enough, you can set the application to use keyboard scroll, caps, or num lock lights to show activity.

On an ending note, Activity Indicator is a practical application that can be used to monitor disk activities, especially when performing heavy read and write operations. Customization options let you adapt it to your style, while entire logs can be analyzed in real time, and saved to file for later use.