HDD light flashes every one second and no CPU usage

I have just built a new PC with a Core 2 Duo 2.93Mhz CPU, 2Gb memory and a single 500Gb HDD.
I have noticed that when the PC is idle (and the Windows Task Manager Performance tab shows 0% CPU Usage) that the HDD light flashes briefly every second.
I have run a scan of my system for viruses which found nothing.
Would my system be polling the drive and if so is this a good idea and if not how do I disable polling?

 

A computer is never truly idle, so I'm confused as to how you can have 0% CPU usage. As a side note, a 2.93MHz Core 2 Duo sounds rather slow to me...

Personally, I wouldn't worry about the hard drive light, as Windows will be running background tasks off it.

 

Did I say 2.93Mhz? Meant 2.93Ghz (CPU)

The reason for my post is that I can't remember the HDD light on my previous PC (2.4Ghz P4, 1Gb DDR ram, 2 x PATA HDD) flashing. My new PC has a SATA HDD - do they operate differently from PATA HDD? I am running XP SP3 on both systems.

Maybe there ARE other processes running constantly (in the background) but the performance tab of Windows Task Manager shows 0% CPU usage!

Does Windows 'poll' drives?

 

I wouldn't worry about hard-drive light flicker, I get that far more often whilst idle. I have no idea why this happens, but as it isn't a problem, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!