Ken,
 
I use Defrag under MSDOS 6.22, a lot, and I have never encountered a problem.
 BTW the reason the disc is flashing even if you are not doing anything is
simply because it is manageing virtual memory.
 
However, this points to perhaps another problem, lokk at the way you are
invoking SMARTDRV, it appears that you may have write-behind enabled.  If
your system crashes of hangs, file may get corrupted.
 
Read the documentation on SMARTDRV, it have it enabled for read only.  I do
not trust anything but a 3000 for write-cache.
 
Kind regards,
 
Denys. . .
 
PS But then again maybe I'm all wet.  I am still learning about PCs.  Crumbs,
come to think of it, I am still learning about everything!!!