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.

Black electrical tape :D

QuickDraw McGraw here!

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

Tape.

A piece of black, electrical tape

Black electrical tape

I am surprised everyone think the same thing as me

Why don't you solve the problem at the root? Take it apart and rip it out.

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

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... 😆

A tape?

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)

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... ;-)

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.

Did anyone suggest using black electrical tape yet?

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.

You could always Dremel it out. First try black electrical tape.

Activity lights are useful! Try a layer (or two, or three) of matte-finish transparent tape to turn down the brightness a bit.

Electrical tape. Black.

I imagine tape would work. For example a black one specialised for electrics.

I would advise against using black electrical tape. It would be better to use black duct tape.

Black pen. Black sharpie. Black electrical tape. Black duct tape. Black roofing felt. Black tar. Black hole.

Came here to say "a sticker". How is this difficult? Lol

Also avoid handling black holes without appropriate protection.

If that doesn't work, I recommend a bit of black electrical tape.

It's okay to be wrong sometimes.

Hack the firmware. Kidding just use tape.

If the setting doesn’t stick just stick some black electrical tape on it.

Any of the available in aur?

This is a standard drive in an external enclosure. They're not opening the drive itself, just the shell around it.

I have a sheet of dark coloured stickers specifically for this task.

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.

Disassemble it then rip the led

Blu tack, cheap, reusable, nondestructive, and blocks light better than tape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu_Tack

Or a black marker, a couple of times.

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

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 ;)

Have you tried plucking your eyes out?

Pretty much what I was going to say, just get a pointy thing and stab it.

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)

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.

Tape, electrical black.

.
Sorry - I couldn't not.

Only available through YUM

I’ve some black circle stickers that cover screws. Would be ideal for small LEDs too

Need a time dilation device to use

Based on the other comments here I'd suggest black electrical tape over the eyes first