WD Black SN750 NVME drive on Endeavor

Hey group. Hope everyone is having a bang up weekend…

Have a question–One of my systems–motherboard is several years old Asus Tuf Z270 Mk 1, Has a pair of M2 slots available. I am still using spinning rust drives. So its time --the system is a production system several years old with the accumulated cruft that happens seemingly out of nowhere…to reinstall and wy not on an NVME drive yes??

Was earlier perusing the WD forii and was a little disappointed to see how the Linux questions were answered by something to the effect that"our drives only support Windoze and Mac". Complaints for example about how to read SMART data off the drive in Linux among other things seemingly according to the forum administrator were completely out of the realm of possibility. Not encouraging at all… complaints by anyone (except so far myself) being told “open a support ticket with WD” not particularly encouraging

System the SN750 is going on (in) should I decide to go ahead now that I have reservations from what I see on the support forum…is also dual boot. Windoze will stay on one of the spinning rust drives, Endeavor will go on the SN750 along with grub. Thats the system drive for what little coding, some video editing and photo editing I do with this…and in the future some software defined radio with OpenSDR…So WD has a pretty control panel for Windoze. I am wondering if from the Windoze drive this WD control panel will see the SN 750 although it is not on the same drive as Windoze and the WD program for things like updating the firmware and checking digital health…I asked on the forum but short of the moderator telling me that the world will end if I put Endeavor on it (which hasnt happened yet) I just wonder if I might be better served to use a brand without such…ahhhh…archaic ideas about Linux.
Questions I asked on that forum --and have scant hope of anything other than being manhandled into a corner and told to make no more noise—malcreado rebel that I am …are whether basic things like SMART reading is possible on a Linux platform with a WD Black M2 NVME SSD and whether anyone here has any experience with WD M2 NVME drives and what it might be. Additionally any recommendations of other drive manufacturers without such provincial ideas about what exists in the world would be deeply appreciated. I was quite frankly very surprised at the attitude there. Whats even more interesting is I have run across various places on the web that say that the WD Blues are good drives for Linux. So if that why not the SN750 Black because of the SN750 superiority on large sequential writes… how to tell if the drive is supported by Endeavor without ordering the thing and trying it.

Any help would be deeply appreciated. Have an awesome weekend!!

I believe you answered this already:

I’m not sure why you’d expect a different answer than a manufacturer forum that’s specific for the device?


You have one recommendation already:

It’s different hardware.


By doing exactly what you have already been doing: research.

1 Like

I am pretty content with Samsung drives.
On this machine:

 sudo inxi -a -z -D 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 266.48 GiB (57.2%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 maj-min: 259:0 vendor: Samsung
    model: SSD 970 EVO 500GB size: 465.76 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B
    logical: 512 B speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 type: SSD serial: <filter>
    rev: 2B2QEXE7 temp: 32.9 C scheme: GPT
  SMART: yes health: PASSED on: 21d 11h cycles: 640
    read-units: 12,808,677 [6.55 TB] written-units: 11,370,287 [5.82 TB]
1 Like

I have SN750 and it has worked well on linux.

Drives:
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 maj-min: 259:0 vendor: Western Digital
    model: WDS500G3X0C-00SJG0 size: 465.76 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B
    logical: 512 B speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 type: SSD serial: <filter>
    rev: 102000WD temp: 38.9 C scheme: GPT
  SMART: yes health: PASSED on: 1y 200d 11h cycles: 1,610

critical_warning : 0
temperature : 40°C (313 Kelvin)
available_spare : 100%
available_spare_threshold : 10%
percentage_used : 0%
endurance group critical warning summary: 0
data_units_read : 42 453 649
data_units_written : 43 283 601
host_read_commands : 570 002 697
host_write_commands : 714 597 943
controller_busy_time : 1 079
power_cycles : 1 610
power_on_hours : 13 571
unsafe_shutdowns : 100
media_errors : 0
num_err_log_entries : 0
Warning Temperature Time : 0
Critical Composite Temperature Time : 0
Thermal Management T1 Trans Count : 0
Thermal Management T2 Trans Count : 0
Thermal Management T1 Total Time : 0
Thermal Management T2 Total Time : 0

3 Likes

this is possible to check before install
with command

sudo smartctl -a /dev/< path nvme >

other brand are
crucial with MX500 or P1 or P5

1 Like

Thanks to all of you for the kind replies. This helps me quite a bit. As Jonathan said this is why I posted here to the forum, asking those more knowledgeable than I. Its good to see someone with an SN750 working well on their system thanks bitterhalt for the information. Pebcak thank you for the information on your Samsung. I have been here for 4 years and have never found any Samsung drive for sale in my experience so far anywhere in Ecuador. Stephane thanks for the Crucial recommendation and info. I very rarely see Crucial for sale here, right now nothing.

I am going to investigate a bit more and decide but thank you all. The other brands the supplier I am working with have are Kingston NV1 line, WD Blue, and Corsair…the Corsair MP600 for 1 TB their price is $238. I have read mixed reviews on the NV1’s and depending on the model,the WD Blues as well. The SN750 is the second most expensive drive they have, price here is $172.

From what I have been able to tell here in Ecuador there are a couple of major importers and whatever they import is what all of the street side stores have to offer. If one goes to Amazon, the WD Black SN750 being offered by someone who ships to Ecuador is $149. Their estimated shipping and duty is another $113 for a whopping $262 by the time it is at my door.

Thanks to all of you for the kindness and interest.

2 Likes

I’m using a wd blue m.2 on the laptop i’m writing from and its good (had it a few years no issues) - for the cost, it was the best for sustained read/writes. I doubt getting a black would give you any noticeable advantage on an older machine.

1 Like

This is nonsense. The person doesn’t know what they are talking about. I use western digital black nvme drives on mine. Have two of them in one computer and one in another.

Edit:

[ricklinux@rick-ms7c37 ~]$ inxi -D
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 5 TiB used: 198.22 GiB (3.9%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Western Digital model: WDS500G3X0C-00SJG0
    size: 465.76 GiB
  ID-2: /dev/nvme1n1 vendor: Western Digital model: WDS500G2X0C-00L350
    size: 465.76 GiB
  ID-3: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WDS500G2B0A-00SM50
    size: 465.76 GiB
  ID-4: /dev/sdb vendor: Seagate model: ST4000DM004-2CV104 size: 3.64 TiB
2 Likes

Gavin1

Thanks for the info and reply. the WD Blue SN750 is $134. So $40 difference. I am considering it. I suspect that what you say about no discernible difference due to it being an older machine might well be true.
Ricklinux thanks for the information as well --for me its good to see another user with good experience. Having used Linux for a number of years I have run into this attitude in a number of places.
Regards and thanks.

WD’s position is based on the fact that they only test their drives against Windows and MacOS. I actually called their support number about it once and after becoming frustrated with the canned responses from a nice young lady, I had my call escalated to a supervisor who confirmed that.

Basically, if the BIOS can see the drive (and it’s not broken), it should work. There are, I’m certain, some obscure exceptions, but I’ve been using WD drives in various hardware formats for close to 30 years and have never had a problem. In fact, I have 4 Blue NVME drives with EOS and they all work perfectly (including the laptop I’m typing this on).

2 Likes

The issues with drives are based on the controller on the motherboard and the implementation of UEFI/Bios. Some drives then might require a kernel parameter such as this as an example. These kinds of kernel parameters are only required when necessary due to other issues not the drive themselves. There are lots of low end crappy drives out there also but WD is not one of them.

nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=5500

1 Like

grenouille

Interesting-- I entered a support ticket with WD after seeing their support forum responses to other Linux users, most notably the one I referenced in my original post about someone wanting access to SMART data.

Jonathan’s post led to reflection on what a moderator or for that matter customer assistant might have access to. For example one more page in what I am sure is a help manual they have titled Linux with something to the effect that" given the number of different Linux distros and the variety of hardware platforms we recommend that you go to your distro’s forum and ask…while our drives are used in a variety of Linux installations we dont have access to the distro specific information you might need here at WD"… ONE page, one sentence completely changes the takeaway a user with questions has… one might argue that a user with any experience might already know to do this but maybe not for a Linux newbie, yes? Given how competitive the hardware market is these days if I were WD or any other company I certainly wouldnt answer a user request with a throwaway one sentence slamming of the door in the user’s face. It would cost the manufacturer NOTHING to do this and might get them a repeat consumer. Particularly given what I perceive as the probable upgrade cycle of a Linux enthusiast, more frequent than most.

ricklinux
Thanks for the info. The nvme_core command you posted I assume is to be added to the Grub kernel string and I have saved it to a note for when I have a drive in hand next week.

Regards.

Yes it is a kernel parameter but only needed if necessary for some hardware depending on the controller and or drives.

Edit: There are others also…

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.