Put your system to sleep and wake it back up. (I use `rtcwake -m mem -s 10`). Power-cycling the drive like this resets whatever security lock the motherboard firmware enables on the drive during the boot process, allowing the drive to accept admin commands like NVMe format and ATA secure erase that would otherwise be rejected. Works on both the WD Black SN700 and SN750 models, doesn't seem to be necessary on the very first (Marvell-based) WD Black or the latest SN850.
I think that's the second-gen WD Black, but the first one that had their in-house SSD controller rather than a third-party controller. The marketing and packaging didn't prominently use a more specific model number to distinguish it from the previous WD Black, but on the drive's label it does say "PC SN700". Also, the first-gen WD Black was 256GB and 512GB capacities, while the later generations are 250/500/1000/2000GB. Firmware version strings for the first-gen WD Black were stuff like "B35200WD", while the SN700/720/730/750 family have versions like "102000WD" and "111110WD". So I would definitely expect your drive to require the sleep-wake cycle before it'll let you reformat to 4k sectors.
But this thread gets into details that are more esoteric than what I cover in most reviews, which are written with a more Windows-oriented audience in mind. Since I do most of my testing on Linux and have an excess of SSDs littering my office, I'm well-equipped to participate in a thread like this.
I highly recommend reddit.com/r/NewMaxx as the clearinghouse for consumer SSD news and Q&A. I'm not aware of a similarly comprehensive forum for enterprise storage, where this thread would probably be a better fit.
