New My Books don't have LED activity light

I just received a new 4TB MyBook. It does not have a white or other color LED to tell you when it is hooked up, or when there is drive activity. I called Tech Support, and they confirmed that these new drives don’t have the LED.

This stinks. This is my 6th Mybook, and all the others have the LED. I use it to tell when the drive is properly connected, and also to see when there is drive activity, which can tell you if the computer is hung up.

If they took this off to save money, that was a dumb decision.

If anyone is aware of some type of replacement, like a utility that would show individual drive activity on the computer, please let me know.

Terry

Hello,

Can you please share the model number of your drive?

This is from the packing list:

Description: MY BOOK 4TB PAN-AM
WD Part Number: WDBBGB0040HBK-NESN

There is another number on the case:
E4C DAABDA 3017Q

I believe it is one of the “My Book (NEW)” drives illustrated on this page showing models of external drives:

https://www.wdc.com/products/external-storage.html

The outside case has very sharp corners (no rounding like previous drives). It is about the same physical size as the previous generation.

Had I known they were dropping the drive activity light on the new model, I would have paid $10 more to get the previous model.

tq

Yeah, me too. I just set up a new My Book (8TB) but am still looking for the LED light. It’s sitting alongside five other WD My Books – even another 8TB a year old (the other four are all 3TB), all with blinking white activity lights. I can’t find anything looking like a light, or where one might belong, on the case.

Model #: WDBBGB0080HBK-NA

Yes indeed, a missing activity LED is a major disappointment for me. Really!
I was about to return my newly bought, unused 8 TB external USB drive and check out another trademark,
LaCie, Seagate, whatever.

I have multiple external WD drives and they all have activity LEDs.
Right now I am copying the entire contents of a 3TB drive to HDD. Unattended, that is.
Once every few hours I check the activity LED and see, from a distance…, the copy-process is still going on.

Now, with the 8TB drive, I need to switch on my monitor each time, which, bottom line is using up more energy then this tiny little LED.

Unsure about the gain of removing this activity LED… but, in my opinion, a bad decision!

=

I have two WD My Books which I recently bought, one 4TB and the other 6TB I think. They have the new more rectilinear, and frankly, ugly designs and they have this same problem of missing any activity LED. I own many other WD external My Book HDDs and they all have activity LEDs.

I’ve been using WD HDDs exclusively for years and I’m disappointed that they wanted to save some extra pennies to increase their bottom line while at the same time inconveniencing the end user.

jdb2

Hi jdbtwo,
Like you I hate the fact that they save a few pennies by eliminating an activity led on the newer Mybooks. Not even a PowerOn led on the newer 5TB drive that I recently bought. I cracked open the case and found that the little controller board (Sata to Usb 3) has provision for an activity led but it is not loaded. The led’s current limit resistor R90 (180 ohms) is there though. It is easy to connect your own led to the pads for the unloaded surface mount led they left off. Of course you wouldn’t be able to see it if they loaded it and they would have had to make it visible to the outside world with lightpipes or something. Anyway you can mount your own led in a hole drilled in the case and connect it to the pads labeled D1. The pad nearest the crystal is the cathode. The pads are near the Y1 crystal. YouTube shows how to open the case. If you’re not a tinkerer/solderer, have a friend do it. It’s easy. The microprocessor on this board is an asmedia ASM1151W which has a dedicated control line to drive this access led (or at least it’s pads). Good luck!

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Ditto, indeed very disappointing. Having 5 WD External USB HDs with LED activity lights, I never thought to look for one when I bought a new My Book 4TB this week.

What a stupid decision just to save a few cents/pennies/whatever. I gather some value engineer was looking for brownie points…!

CBA

People in WD company are very stupid.
First they discontinued a very nice product WD TV Live Hub. Now they produce external HDs without LED, so users do not know in what condition their HD.

Unbelievable design flaw, that somehow made it through quality control to mass production. I purchased the WDBBGB0040HBK-NESN from Bestbuy at a really good sales price. I think I know why the price was so low. If I had known that there are no power or operating LEDs on this product, I would not have purchased it. I’m very disappointed.

I just bought a WD my book 6TB Hard Drive. Just like others I am VERY Disappointed to see there is no LED light to see if the product is powered on or working.
WD what’s your excuse for this poor product design change??? What do u achieve by not having a LED ?
Are you doing it save a few pennies? Your designer who designed this is pathetic. I am not a hardware designer but I can design a better product than this with my common sense. Your whole team should be responsible for putting out such a poor designed product for WD who has a good reputation.
Even my 6 year old asked where the small light was.
Very Disappointed

Has anyone found a reliable replacement for the lack of an activity LED on the newer MyBooks. I tried a couple of utilities that were supposed to show drive activity in the system tray. But I either could not get it to reliably work, or was not able to get it showing the MyBook only, instead it would also show activity on the internal drive of the computer . . . so no help.

Just like to add that WD’s Black SN750 NVMe SSD too lacks a drive activity light signal. After installing it, the LED drive activity lamp on my case no longer flickers to indicate drive activity. I now have two WD drives that do not indicate whether they’re hooked up or there is drive read/write activity going on - a brand new My Book and the SN750 SSD… It must be a new mode of computing the user must adapt to.

I’m sorry, I just cannot believe a technology company can’t understand this…I’m gonna build my own.

Well, now I know why this drive was so cheap. It is at least $30 cheaper than an internal hard drive. Go figure. Yes it is dumb that they omitted an activity light. I am tempted to take the thing apart to see if the internal hard disk has one and then drill a hole in the case .
I am thinking of all the dumb things I’ve seen in computing. Second on my list are keyboards with no Caps Lock light. I’ve seen keyboards that had extraneous leds on them but no caps lock. (Yes , I am thinking of you Lenovo). Having an activity app in the pc is not a solution. I suppose that someone with an MBA got a bright idea to leave off these details.

It’s not a “new mode”; it’s profiteering off of customers.
It is what globalist bankers are doing to everything: degrading; regressing; third-worlding. And, to everyone: leveling; depopulating; impoverishing; dis-libertizing. Time to change the reality they use at our expense, and without asking permission! I would have paid the extra for this minimal requirement, and paid WDC directly so those parasitic bankers couldn’t vampire out a percentage from the transaction. It’s time that tech firms showed backbone. Monetarists are always against innovation and people. Always.