IMO, The only useful LED wrt HDD status on the empeg would one that is one when one of the parititions is mounted RW so I'd know at a glance not to pull the power.

This is NOT A BAD IDEA, I really like it.

How about suggesting a Hijack feature for an optional "Write Enabled" indicator.

When the screen is on, there would be a blinking icon or something, similar to the player software's hard disk indicator. When the screen is off, the standby LED would pulse with a different pattern than normal to indicate write enabled.