Update firmware WD Black SN770 firmware on Arch Linux

Been having problems with my new SN770 drive, and decided to check if I can firmware update it on Linux. WD only provides a Windows tool, Western Digital Dashboard to download and install firmwares, but, it's possible to find the firmware and install it using Linux tooling as well.

1. Check that nvme-cli is installed:

❱ sudo pacman -S nvme-cli

2. Find the current firmware version

Run nvme to check which firmware version is installed:

❱ sudo nvme id-ctrl /dev/nvme0 | grep "fr "
fr        : 731100WD

In my case it tells that firmware is 731100WD.

3. Find and download the firmware for your drive

Open the URL that the WD Dashboard Downloads uses, and find your drive in the list: https://wddashboarddownloads.wdc.com/wdDashboard/config/devices/lista_devices.xml

My drive was here:

<lista_device model="WD_BLACK SN770 1TB">
  <url>wdDashboard/firmware/WD_BLACK_SN770_1TB/731120WD/device_properties.xml</url>
</lista_device>

From there look at the device_properties.xml, https://wddashboarddownloads.wdc.com/wdDashboard/firmware/WD_BLACK_SN770_1TB/731120WD/device_properties.xml:

<ffu version="1.0">
<model>WD_BLACK SN770 1TB</model>
<fwmode>mode3</fwmode>
<fwversion>731120WD</fwversion>
<fwfile>731120WD.fluf</fwfile>
<dependency model="WD_BLACK SN770 1TB">731030WD</dependency>
<dependency model="WD_BLACK SN770 1TB">731100WD</dependency>
</ffu>

Now we can download the fluf file: https://wddashboarddownloads.wdc.com/wdDashboard/firmware/WD_BLACK_SN770_1TB/731120WD/731120WD.fluf

The fluf file is the firmware format for the WD drive. It contains checksums and drive identifiers, so the drive controller should fail if you try to install a wrong firmware, but, better double-check that you have the correct one :-)

4. Apply the firmware

Use nvme to download firmware and commit it. Both commands should be successful.

❱ sudo nvme fw-download /dev/nvme0 -f ./731120WD.fluf
❱ sudo nvme fw-commit -s 2 -a 3 /dev/nvme0

Finally reboot, and step 2 again to check that the firmware is running on the correct version.