NVME-WDC-GET-PFAI(1)

💅 NAME

nvme-wdc-get-pfail-dump — grab the pfail crash dump off your WDC device. that's it, that's the whole job 🫶

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

nvme [<global-options>] wdc get-pfail-dump <device>
                        [--output-file=<FILE>, -O <FILE>]

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so bestie, here's the tea ☕ — you point this at an NVMe device and it sends the WDC vendor-unique pfail crash dump request, then saves whatever comes back to a file. in the current implementation, the pfail crash dump gets captured if it's present. on success it'll save the dump to a file with the appropriate suffix 🎀

⚠️ real talk though: this command will clear the available dump from the device on success. like, gone. so make sure you actually wanted it 💀

the <device> parameter is mandatory and it's a NVMe character device (e.g. /dev/nvme0). no device, no dump, no vibes ✨

and lowkey important: this only works on WDC devices that support this feature. results for any other device are undefined — so like, don't 😭

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💖 OPTIONS 💖

• -O <FILE>, --output-file=<FILE> — the output file you want. defaults to the device serial number followed by the "pfail_dump" suffix. cute and automatic 🌈

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👑 GLOBAL OPTIONS 👑

these are defined at the top-level nvme command, but they're available to this subcommand too. icons only ✨

• --dry-run — prints the command that would be executed, but does not actually execute it. all the fantasy, none of the consequences 💅
• --no-ioctl-probing — disables probing for 64-bit IOCTL support.
• --no-retries — disables retry logic on transient errors. one shot, one opportunity 🎯
• -o <fmt>, --output-format=<fmt> — sets the reporting format to normal, tabular, 'json, or binary. only one output format may be used at a time (pick your fighter, not both) ⭐
• --output-format-version=<version> — selects 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 — suppresses informational messages. errors are still reported, and --quiet cancels any --verbose for the library log level 🤫
• --set-options=<key=value>[,<key=value>...] — sets libnvme library options for this invocation. supported keys are force-4k, mi-probe-enabled, test-base-dir and test-sysfs-dir 🧚
• --timeout=<ms> — sets the timeout for the command in milliseconds. infinite or -1 waits without a time limit (0xffffffff). for the girlies who refuse to be rushed 💅
• -v, --verbose — increases the level of detail in the output. may be specified multiple times to further increase verbosity. more is more, always 🔥

these options can also be set as machine-wide defaults in nvme-cli.conf(5). a command-line flag always overrides the file — flags are the main character here 👑

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🦋 EXAMPLES 🦋

• gets the pfail crash dump from the device and saves it to the default file in the current directory (e.g. STM00019F3F9_pfail_dump.bin):

# nvme wdc get-pfail-dump /dev/nvme0

• gets the pfail crash dump from the device and saves it to a defined file in the current directory (e.g. testSTM00019F3F9_pfail_dump.bin):

# nvme wdc get-pfail-dump /dev/nvme0 -O test

• gets the pfail crash dump from the device and saves it to a defined file with a pathname (e.g. /tmp/testSTM00019F3F9_pfail_dump.bin):

# nvme wdc get-pfail-dump /dev/nvme0 -O /tmp/test

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💜 NVME

part of the nvme-user suite 🌸

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that's the whole page bestie, go forth and dump responsibly 🫶 this was brought to you by the NVMe crew, dated 10/30/2026 — ily, bye 🎀✨