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.
There’s nothing which duct tape can’t fix.
Try
brightnessctl. If it does not recognize it, go with some tape I guess.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.
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…
I’d recommend an strip of paper 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?
gaff tape
why not a tape, black, for electrical things
The age old solution of TAPE.
Black electrical tape, work better than any software
If they don’t find ya handsome, they should find you handy.
Perfect answer, no need for me to scroll further.
Matte black nail polish…works there and on annoying Bluetooth lights
Close your eyes
Open it up and desolder the led?
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.
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
