This is a simple Linux tool to control the LED mode of WD My Passport drives.

For Windows and macOS you can use the official WD Drive Utilities.

./wdled DEVICE [VALUE]

• DEVICE:
  SCSI device to control (e.g /dev/disk/by-id/usb-WD_My_Passport_...)
• VALUE:
  LED mode to set ('on' or 'off', 0 or 255)
  Omit to read current mode
  Prefix with 'save:' to have the disk remember the LED mode

To turn the LED off permanently:

wdled /dev/disk/by-id/usb-WD_My_Passport_foo save:off

To turn the LED off until next power cycle:

wdled /dev/disk/by-id/usb-WD_My_Passport_foo off

To get the current LED mode:

wdled /dev/disk/by-id/usb-WD_My_Passport_foo

• WD My Passport 0837
• WD My Passport 259D
• WD My Passport 259E
• WD My Passport 259F
• WD My Passport 259A
• WD My Passport 25E1
• WD My Passport 25E2

To prevent sending weird commands to unsuspecting disks, wdled has a hardcoded list of known supported devices and will refuse to operate if a disk does not match this list.

To facilitate testing, you can force wdled to operate on an unknown disk.

If you determine your device is supported by this tool, please submit a github pull request or issue.

This should be RELATIVELY safe to run, and will do some sanity checks, if you see something like the following, your disk MAY be supported:

$ wdled /dev/disk/by-id/usb-WD_My_Passport_foo FORCEGET
WARNING: Skipping supported vendor/product checks!
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-WD_My_Passport_foo: WD       My Passport 1337 (rev 1234)
MANUALLY SKIPPED UNSUPPORTED DEVICE CHECK!
LED: current=255 original=255 saved=255

If this works, you want to flip the LED mode in WD Drive Utilities, then run the command again and make sure the value has changed as expected.

DANGER: Running this command may break your disk, and cause all your data to be lost!
The LED setting is VERY vendor specific, so please only try this on WD My Passport drives or derivatives.
If you're sure your disk is supported, you may want to try forcing the LED mode set:

$ wdled /dev/disk/by-id/usb-WD_My_Passport_foo FORCESET:off
WARNING: Skipping supported vendor/product checks!
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-WD_My_Passport_foo: WD       My Passport 1337 (rev 1234)
MANUALLY SKIPPED UNSUPPORTED DEVICE CHECK!
LED: current=255 original=255 saved=255

You can install a pre-built version of wdled from an Ubuntu PPA: https://launchpad.net/~jbit.net/+archive/ubuntu/wdled

add-apt-repository ppa:jbit.net/wdled
apt install wdled

Make sure you have sg3_utils development files installed.

On Debian and Ubuntu:

apt install libsgutils2-dev

On Fedora/CentOS:

yum install sg3_utils-devel

Then just run make!

make

Copyright 2020 James Lee (jbit@jbit.net)

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