click-click in floppy disk drive

[Warren Block]

On Tue, 22 Oct 2013, Polytropon wrote:

> On Mon, 21 Oct 2013 13:56:05 -0700 (PDT), leeoliveshackelford at surewest.net wrote:
>> Good afternoon, dear FreeBSD enthusiast.  I have recently
>> installed FreeBSD 9.1 on my Hewlett-Packard Z220 workstation.
>> I added a Sabrent u.s.b. floppy drive.  Two days ago, I ran
>> the "periodic" program.
>
> The "periodic" facility is just a collection of scripts for
> cron that get run at specific intervals. Are you referencing
> to the stock system's /etc/periodic scripts or did you add
> any custom scripts?

>> Ever since then, the floppy drive clicks once every 2 seconds,
>> followed by a double blink of the hard drive light.

Some background things like HAL may poll removable media devices to 
detect new media, and this might cause a floppy to click.  Could depend 
on the manufacturer of the drive.  That would be my first guess, anyway.

If that is the cause, it may be possible to tell whatever is doing the 
polling to skip the floppy device.