Question WD Black SN750 M.2 NVMe SSD on Linux ?

[expat42451]

First time I have posted in a while Toms is my go to place for knowledge......

From reading the reviews on the site, I am interested in a WD Black SN750 NVMe 1TB M.2 drive. Will be used on an Asus Tuf Z270 MB running Manjaro Linux with the 5.16 kernel. The mb has 2 M.2 slots assignable either to PCIe or SATA. There are currently 3 SATA mechanical drives in the system. This is a production system I use for photo and video editing, some coding and SDR.... software defined radio. I chose the SN750 after reading the review here becaue of its good specifications on sustained sequential write performance. Other than experience with my laptop this is my first experience with M2 NVME drives on a desktop.

I earlier joined the WD support forum and was surprised that the moderators were telling members who had questions about things like reading WD NVME drive SMART values under linux that "WD only supports Windoze and MAC"....

So several questions... WD provides a Windoze control panel for their drives to do things like look at drive health and update the firmware from what I understand. My machine has Windoze 10 on a mechanical drive on SATA. If I install the WD control panel on the Windoze drive, will it be able to "see" the SN750 and moreover do things like update firmware SMART&c??

Will the normal disk utilities in Linux be able to parse the SMART values and drive health on the SN750?

Is it possible to update the SN750 firmware from Linux or only with WD utilities?

Finally after the fresh install of Manjaro on the SN750 I am assuming I can reconnect the SATA drives, do an "update-grub" and be able to access the other drives (and boot to Windoze 10) ..is this correct?

From what I read here my impression is that the best way to go forward is to assign the NVME drive to PCIe in the BIOS, then do a UEFI fresh install of Manjaro.... part of the reason for the new drive other than speed is the main operating system is several years old and with the cruft that can accumulate --things are slow....so install the NVME, config BIOS/UEFI , disconnect the SATA drives and a UEFI from USB install of Manjaro-- then after successfully booting a few times, connect the SATA drives, update-grub.... move /home over to the NVME drive from the existing system drive. I anticipate the NVME drive as the boot drive but have seen discussions elsewhere about how this can be problematic so any advice would be appreciated. What I see doing is disconnecting the current SATA system drive after I move /home to NVME. Then after say a month to see how it works, nuke and pave the existing system drive and use it for bulk storage on the system.....

If I dont have this more or less correct any advice would be appreciated. Also if I should consider another drive please suggest. This is sold as a gaming drive and while I am not a gamer, the specs are what I find attractive. If this isnt a good choice for my system please say so. I live most of every year now in Ecuador so acquiring stuff here is really difficult. This model drive is available at somewhat higher cost than in the US. There is a very limited selection of what is available so I want to make sure this is a good choice.

Thanks very much for the read and interest.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

You're advised to follow procedures outlined by WD on steps to update your firmware for said SSD. Samsung updates the firmware off of it's Magician app GUI, while Transcend tend to have their firmware updates happen using a form of Linux, after you make a bootable USB drive with firmware on it.

As for your query, since all hardware will be connected to your platform regardless of OS, yes the WD SSD will show up in Windows 10 and as such if you have the app installed on Windows 10, you can run the utility and subsequently have the firmware update run for said SSD, however please keep in mind that you're advised to update your firmware prior to installing anything on the SSD or at the very least make sure you've backed up any and/or all mission critical data off the SSD prior to the firmware update.

 

[expat42451]

Hi Lutfij

Thank you for the welcome. Also thanks very much for the great information. Given that the WD control panel works from Windows as you indicate then that will make what I do easier. I am curious about whether the path I see to upgrading the system that I have outlined here is correct i.e the methodology for the install.

Again thanks for the kindness and interest.
Regards