SSD support question

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 19 Feb 2021 20:30:05 -0800, rikona wrote:
>I'm considering either a Samsung or Western Digital SSD for an upgrade.
>Both say they need a Windows-based program to monitor the disc or
>upgrade its firmware, and apparently don't offer any Linux software. Is
>there a way to monitor or upgrade these discs on a Ubuntu box? If not,
>would I be able to move the disk to my Windows box and do these
>operations there? What is the best way to deal with this?

Hi,

if you have good luck, then the drives are in the Linux smart database,
so you at least could use smartctl to get useful information, but I
wouldn't bet on that. I'm only using OCZ/Toshiba/Kioxia SSDs. The
Kioxia SSD utility for OCZ/Toshiba/Kioxia is available as Linux
software by a Linux live DVD. IIRC it's on Fedora. It's easy to copy
the SSD utility to a Linux install. It at least works copied to Arch
Linux [1].

>Also, if I format the SSDs in, say, EXT3/4, will that make the disk
>totally unusable when attached to a Windows computer, such that the
>Windows SSD program would not be able to do anything with the SSD?

I'm just guessing, but I suspect that it doesn't matter. Getting valid
SMART data should work for the disks, since the data isn't for a
particular partition. Updating the firmware should work, too.

>If they can't be upgraded, would it be reasonable to just live with the
>SSD not being upgraded for the life of the disk?

There's always a reason for an update. If you have good luck, non of
those reasons do matter for your SSD usage, if you have bad luck, all
updates are important for your SSD usage. IOW no, under some
circumstances it could be mandatory to update the firmware, you can not
ignore firmware updates. OTOH I never noticed any difference after
updating the firmware of my SSDs.

Regards,
Ralf

[1]
[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ ldd /usr/local/bin/kioxia_ssd_utility/SSDUtility 
	linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffded795000)
	/usr/lib/libgtk3-nocsd.so.0 (0x00007fb5d38d3000)
	libxcb-glx.so.0 => /usr/lib/libxcb-glx.so.0 (0x00007fb5d3873000)
	libX11-xcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/libX11-xcb.so.1 (0x00007fb5d386e000)
	libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00007fb5d372d000)
	libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/libxcb.so.1 (0x00007fb5d3703000)
	libdl.so.2 => /usr/lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00007fb5d36fc000)
	libGL.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 (0x00007fb5d3674000)
	libpthread.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007fb5d3653000)
	libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007fb5d3476000)
	libm.so.6 => /usr/lib/libm.so.6 (0x00007fb5d3331000)
	libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007fb5d3317000)
	libc.so.6 => /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007fb5d314a000)
	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 => /usr/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fb5d6883000)
	libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0x00007fb5d3143000)
	libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0x00007fb5d313b000)
	libGLdispatch.so.0 => /usr/lib/libGLdispatch.so.0 (0x00007fb5d3084000)
	libGLX.so.0 => /usr/lib/libGLX.so.0 (0x00007fb5d3051000)
[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ objdump -p /usr/local/bin/kioxia_ssd_utility/SSDUtility | grep NEEDED
  NEEDED               libxcb-glx.so.0
  NEEDED               libX11-xcb.so.1
  NEEDED               libX11.so.6
  NEEDED               libxcb.so.1
  NEEDED               libdl.so.2
  NEEDED               libGL.so.1
  NEEDED               libpthread.so.0
  NEEDED               libstdc++.so.6
  NEEDED               libm.so.6
  NEEDED               libgcc_s.so.1
  NEEDED               libc.so.6
  NEEDED               ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ sudo /usr/local/bin/kioxia_ssd_utility/SSDUtility
[sudo] password for rocketmouse: 
QFontDatabase: Cannot find font directory /home/ukt-build/QtStatic/lib/fonts.
Note that Qt no longer ships fonts. Deploy some (from http://dejavu-fonts.org for example) or switch to fontconfig.
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$

Related to a possible non default loader
"lsof -P -T -p $(pidof SSDUtility)" returns exit status 1 and no output
at all.