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.
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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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" 😅