It's ironic that the mass adoption of SSDs also coincides with the gradual disappearance of HDD activity lights on laptops, because with a completely silent SSD the light becomes the only way to know if the machine is slow because of heavy disk activity or something else. Nonvisual/"side-channel" cues are extremely useful for understanding what's happening.

I suppose it's similar to the situation with newer cars, where the engine is so quiet that one sometimes forgets whether it's even on, and attempts to start it again. There have even been laws introduced to make sure that cars can be heard: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8925126