How to disable this blinking light on a WD External Hard Drive?
I am on Arch Linux and I want to disable this activity indicator light on a WD hard drive. I know there is a software on Windows for doing that, but since I am on Linux, how could I do it? This light is annoying when I am in a dark room.
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Black electrical tape :D
QuickDraw McGraw here!
Came here to say "a sticker". How is this difficult? Lol
Or a black marker, a couple of times.
Naaaa my experience with sharpies and high school desks between 2001 amd 2005 has taught me that sharpies have this like erasing affect when you try to color layers over dried layers. It like re moistenes the dried ink and is like absorbed by the marker. Its weird and idk if im describing it correctly but I know it happens. There were more days of full day suspension than i can count and desks i would try to color all black from top to bottom in the name of disenfranchisedestablishmentarianism or whatever the fuck it was called. As of 35 years old i have since known it was all just a front to be a young dumb fucking shithead who liked to be an asshole.
First a line, then once dried, dab to fill the lighter areas.
Just read the second half of your comment. A whole school, without a single teacher you can connect with, totally sucks. Good luck finding other paths.
What this was 2003 you got called a removed for being a fucking nerd. There were tons of outlets resources and people there to help but a 14-18 year old could be at school the at a friends or hanging around town till 9 10pm go home to sleeping parents and avoid any adult interaction at their will. This wasnt house hold specific it was how much and how swiftly the goal posts have moved for wjat is parenting and what is helicopter parenting. Fuck there were entire summers swarms of kids basically lived at rec centers with no staff but outside courts and inside gymnasium. There was always one life guard but thats it. Fights broke out cops were called and everyone was told to go home but was back later that day. We could carry fuckin engine blocks accross the train tressle hundreds of feet above the water way and fucking launch them over the side. Hundreds of pounds of steel and oil carried in turns of 4 adolescent boys thousands of yards from the roadway, accross tressle hundreds of feet high with missing rr ties here and there you can fall to your death thru and we watched that fucking thing fly faster than anything ive ever s3en in my life slaming into the shale creek bed with so much force it sounded and felt like fucking explosion of several pounds of dynamite leaving what looked like a massive bloody stain across the water surfac3 cuz noone thought to drain the oil out first. Istantly for even as fucking dumb and pieces of shit we were at that age we all instantly felt bad for not even thinking about the oil in it but hey live and learn. We only thru shit that broke after that off the tressle that we could clean up from the shore and kayaks after that.
Edit: got me thinking back on tressle memories and thats not even the craziest. We used to have competitions to see who could climb accross the mettal joists underneath the tracks hanging like jungle gym out over the cliff side and there was always rocks being thrown from the onlookers trying to pelt the ones climbing with a hundreds of feet drop below them. We are talking the age group that was raised on cky videos before jackass went mainstream. We cut down trees with self milled semi auto rifles modified to fire automatic using 100 round drums. Someone made an automatic fucking 12 ga that noonne could drain it's drum fed magazine it had for it. Wasnt 100rd tho i wanna say it was 50rd. We got the cops called cuz the house we partied at was about a quarter mile from the high way and the cops got calls from people driving on the highway that they kept seeing cars launched into the air over the treeline. What it was you see was we got our first skidsteer and one of our buddies had a beater car they bought for like $500 so we were using the skidsteer to to pick it up and flip it into the air as high as we could while the dude was paased out drunk in the basement.
You're describing it completely correctly. Erasable sharpies are basically the same as non-erasable, only they contain a small bit of solvent (usually ethanol I think) to make the markings erasable.
This also means that if you accidentally use a non-erasable marker, you can usually remove it by drawing over it with an erasable one.
I've use the dry erase marker over permanent marker "trick" many times.
Did anyone suggest using black electrical tape yet?
ITT
comments stating to open up the drive and disconnect the LED: 2
comments stating to try and change the firmware: 1
comments stating to use tape or nail polish: jfc so many comments
I blame federation delays.
They were hours apart, though.
Tape, electrical black.
This is the way
This is the way.
This, is the way.
Black pen. Black sharpie. Black electrical tape. Black duct tape. Black roofing felt. Black tar. Black hole.
Also avoid handling black holes without appropriate protection.
Would electro magnetic radiation erase it before spaghettification?
Need a time dilation device to use
Any of the available in aur?
Only available through YUM
Everything Black
Why does that sound like the radioactive dragon thingie for that netflix show about league of legends?
I have a sheet of dark coloured stickers specifically for this task.
I’ve some black circle stickers that cover screws. Would be ideal for small LEDs too
Probably no one's thought of this yet, but i'm going to say black electrical tape. If you put it over your eyes it takes care of all your devices at once.
A piece of black, electrical tape
If they don't find ya handsome, they should find you handy.
Perfect answer, no need for me to scroll further.
If it moves and it's not supposed to: duct tape. If it doesn't move and is supposed to: wd40
Painters tape and a sharpie. Layered.
-Autist with severe light sensitivity
You have gold hydride-dideuteride? Lucky!
Black nail polish. Two coats.
Now that it's spring, your toes can be out in style instead of inside of your Arch BTW socks
The only right answer. Works really well every time.
Have a friend stand in front of it
Arch users dont have friends
A friend, with a benefit.
Yeah, a light blocking friend.
My favourite answer
Black electrical tape, work better than any software
Black electrical tape
You could always Dremel it out. First try black electrical tape.
Have you tried plucking your eyes out?
Based on the other comments here I'd suggest black electrical tape over the eyes first
based on the other comments here i had to double check if this thread was in [email protected] smh my head
I imagine tape would work. For example a black one specialised for electrics.
.
Sorry - I couldn't not.
Gordon Freeman?
You could not not?
No, that's right.
Pretty much what I was going to say, just get a pointy thing and stab it.
Brown electrical tape, if you don't have black electrical tape.
The age old solution of TAPE.
Activity lights are useful! Try a layer (or two, or three) of matte-finish transparent tape to turn down the brightness a bit.
If that doesn't work, I recommend a bit of black electrical tape.
in even more ways than one might think.
(see also this and this later work from the same author...)
Author wish he was born in 1880 and is not going to give up! (context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photophone )
PS: thanks for the links, between this PIXHELL, GAIROSCOPE, or SATAn clearly air-gap is just a concept. Fascinating to go through his work basically using everything potential to go through. Great overview in https://arxiv.org/html/2409.04190v1
I'd recommend an strip of tape or plastic, ideally with adhesive on one side. Ideally a dark color, like black.
Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?
Tape.
Any colour I should be using?
Electrical
I'm partial to clear.
There’s nothing which duct tape can’t fix.
Right, in my field it's gaffer tape but the same principle applies.
We call it Jesus tape.
Blu tack, cheap, reusable, nondestructive, and blocks light better than tape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu_Tack
Electrical tape. Black.
For an actual answer, it looks like WD has something called
wdckitthat is available on request.I see a corresponding AUR entry that looks like it's grabbing some zip from a personal Russian CDN. Super sketchy looking tbh.
But it's possible this tool has whatever functionality the windows WD Utility uses to toggle the light in the drive's firmware.
IMO, it's not worth it. I'd just go the electrical tape route and maybe ask WD Customer Support if there's a way, and if not, ask that they support Linux better in the future.
Wow this is the exact perfect example of why someone should install from AUR as less as possible, manually checking the pkgbuild and not just "yay yolo"
In this case the archive seems to be clean and be what wd would send if contacted, (even Windows versions are in the zip)
Btw WTF WD. Why making a tool and its documentation only available on request?? It is nothing special, more or less do the same stuff that the GUI can do (show details, send erase command, send ATA password command).
It doesn't seem to be able to disable the activity LED
I am surprised everyone think the same thing as me
No, not quite everyone...
l was about to mention trying to open the case.
Seems like if you own a soldering iron, everything looks like a tinkering project... 😆
Don't need to open the case. Hold the soldering iron on the light until light goes out.
I do have a soldering iron, but god forbid i won't open up a hard disk lol(even if this is less risky to open this one)
This is a standard drive in an external enclosure. They're not opening the drive itself, just the shell around it.
I mean messing with circuitry around a hard drive can also be problematic
Not really. You're not messing with the hard drive itself at all. A hard drive is a sealed component. Unless you're taking an extremely strong magnet near it, dripping it, or trying to directly inject power to the pins on the drive, there is no risk of damaging it.
You're messing with the plastic shell and maybe a small board that handles low power conversion and the LED. These are very simple things.
l have to add that I'm ancient and most extemal hard disks I have lying around still have actual 2.5" or even 3.5" devices with standard connectors in there.
Have opened at least two of those to exchange drives.
So my perspective is slightly twisted... ;-)
That was still i was reffering to. I am still kinda scared to solder in there. Fault in the connector circuit may also end ir
I have this exact hard drive, it only cost about $30. If I cared about the light, I would be at least willing to attempt to mechanically disable it. Judging by OP asking, I'm assuming they are too.
Open it up and desolder the led?
Hack the firmware. Kidding just use tape.
Huh!, just Disconnect the drive from power source and it will OFF.
They sell travel sized rolls of that gorilla tape.
It sticks to just about anything, pretty much forever, and is totally opaque.
Should work like a charm.
A big-ass hammer.
A true man of culture, I see 🫡
A big ass-hammer
I found a bit of plasticine / modeling clay to be very effective.
Because in the rare case that some circuit relies on the led acting as a resistor (planned obsolescence), you'd break the device with forcefully removing it.
(the green part)
What about pliestocene?
What's that? Not the geological epoch, right? As long as it doesn't conduct electricity and blocks light i guess.
Matte black nail polish....works there and on annoying Bluetooth lights
why not a tape, black, for electrical things
I would advise against using black electrical tape. It would be better to use black duct tape.
It's okay to be wrong sometimes.
Duct tape
Why don't you solve the problem at the root? Take it apart and rip it out.
You know those rubber feet things you can get that you put on furniture legs? I love those. Block out the LED lights on the air conditioning in the bedroom, computers, etc.
I think black nail polish can work too, if you know any BTGGs.
Try
brightnessctl. If it does not recognize it, go with some tape I guess.gaff tape
This is the only correct answer.
Disassemble it then rip the led
Orient it so the LED is facing away from you, with the LED facing a surface covered with Vantablack or some such equivalent. This saves on tape etc...
If the setting is saved by the drive you could set it on a windows machine and then switch it back to linux.
I'm not sure if wine for running whatever the window utility youre thinking of is would work for controlling an external device like that
I don't think WINE would work, because it likely relies on a custom driver.
If you don't have a Windows installation, booting into a WinPE LiveCD (like Sergei Strelec's WinPE: https://m.majorgeeks.com/files/details/sergei_strelecs_winpe.html) and installing it in the live environment should work. Running Windows in a VM should work too, if you pass the USB drive through to the VM.
If the setting doesn’t stick just stick some black electrical tape on it.
I was trying to contribute some other options since the entire thread is like 50 people saying "some electrical tape will fix it" 😅
Masking take and permanent marker or pen works too if you don't have electical tape.
Any arts store or online you can get a sheet of dark coloured stickers for cheaps that have become essential in modern life. Quick, easy, removable. Even on nova-quality LEDs where light still escapes, you can double up.
On several over-bright backlit LCD screens, where I still need to read the info, I create a simple hinge with thin cardboard and a short strip of sticky tape. Cardboard flaps down but can be lifted up to see the info.
Close your eyes
Why limit it to a specific OS? Open it up and inline a resistor, say 680 ohm or so.
Or wire a simple on-off switch. Or both ;)
The real answer is to open it up and solder in a wire that shorts out the LED.
I'm guessing you formatted the drive? Most of them are NTFS by default.
When I switched to Mac, my Mac wouldn't even read the drive, due to the enclosure being Windows-specific (to be fair, it said so on the box; they've since expanded). So I shucked the drive, put it in a custom enclosure... and paid $10 for a program that lets me R/W to NTFS on macOS.
I can't remember if it had a light.
Oddly, the new enclosure also uses USB-B. Hate that damn port. I have a hub that uses it, too. Fun fact: that port is the reason for Lightning existing. Apple was (and is) on the USB committee or whatever it was, but when they saw USB-B, they (quite rightly) said hell no and went to Intel to develop Lightning. They wanted something that they could roll with for ten years. USB-B was used in a handful of phones for like one generation (Galaxy S5/Note 4) and then it was USB-C. If the USB committee had jumped straight to USB-C, Lightning never would have happened. In case you needed another reason to hate that connector.