NVME-WDC-DRIVE-ES(1)

💖 nvme-wdc-drive-essentials 💖

NVME-WDC-DRIVE-ES(1) · NVMe Manual · bestie edition ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

nvme-wdc-drive-essentials — retrieve a WDC device’s drive essentials bin files and save them to a tar file. 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

nvme [<global-options>] wdc drive-essentials <device>
                               [--dir-name=<DIRECTORY>, -d <DIRECTORY>]

🌺 DESCRIPTION 🌺

Okay so for the NVMe device you give it, this captures the drive essential bin files and saves them into a tar file. The tar file comes out in this format:

DRIVE_ESSENTIALS_<Serial Num>_<FW Revision>_<Date>_<Time>.tar.gz

e.g. DRIVE_ESSENTIALS_A00FD8CA_1048_20170713_091731.tar.gz

The <device> parameter is mandatory, bestie. It’s an NVMe character device (ex: /dev/nvme0).

⚠️ This will only work on WDC devices supporting this feature. Results for any other device are undefined. Like, fr fr, do not just point it at random hardware and hope for the best. 💀

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -d <DIRECTORY>, --dir-name=<DIRECTORY> — output directory; defaults to current working directory.

👑 GLOBAL OPTIONS 👑

The following options are defined at the top-level nvme command and are available to this subcommand:

• --dry-run — print the command that would be executed, but do not actually execute it.
• --no-ioctl-probing — disable probing for 64-bit IOCTL support.
• --no-retries — disable retry logic on transient errors.
• -o <fmt>, --output-format=<fmt> — set the reporting format to normal, tabular, 'json, or binary. Only one output format may be used at a time.
• --output-format-version=<version> — select the output format version. Version 1 uses the original field naming, while version 2 (default) provides more consistent and script-friendly field names. Other versions are rejected.
• --quiet — suppress informational messages. Errors are still reported, and --quiet cancels any --verbose for the library log level.
• --set-options=<key=value>[,<key=value>...] — set libnvme library options for this invocation. Supported keys are force-4k, mi-probe-enabled, test-base-dir and test-sysfs-dir.
• --timeout=<ms> — set the timeout for the command in milliseconds. infinite or -1 waits without a time limit (0xffffffff).
• -v, --verbose — increase the level of detail in the output. May be specified multiple times to further increase verbosity.

These options can also be set as machine-wide defaults in nvme-cli.conf(5). A command-line flag always overrides the file. 🫶

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

• Gets the drive essentials data files from the device and saves the tar file in current directory (e.g. DRIVE_ESSENTIALS_A00FD8CA_1048_20170713_091731.tar.gz):

# nvme wdc drive-essentials /dev/nvme0

• Gets the drive essentials data files from the device and saves the tar file to specified directory (e.g. /tmp/DRIVE_ESSENTIALS_A00FD8CA_1048_20170713_091731):

# nvme wdc drive-essentials /dev/nvme0 -d /tmp/

🌈 NVME 🌈

Part of the nvme-user suite. ✨

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mwah 💖 that’s the whole page, bestie. Source/version: NVMe · date: 10/30/2026 · manual: NVME-WDC-DRIVE-ES(1).