WD (Sandisk) NVMe M.2 stick not quite working

I don't know whether you're still having these issues, but I'll at least post this in case others run into it.

I have this same drive and use it is as my primary drive running 18.04. I've used the Windows firmware utility and haven't seen any updates to this point. I also tested the live environment for 19.04, which has the same freeze ups/failure to install I experienced with 18.04 and 18.10 so the issue seems to still be open.

The problem appears to be that the drive becomes unstable when it goes into low power states so the fix is to disable the low power modes via kernel boot parameter. I did this a few months back and have had zero problems on 18.04 since. This method should work on the new versions (18.10/19.04) as well, but it's a shame that it hasn't been fixed yet.

In the GRUB boot menu, press e to edit startup parameter. Add nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=5500 by the end of quiet splash Ctrl-x to boot up, the installer should detect this disk in partition step.

After finishing finish installation, press shift while power on to enter GRUB again, add same kernel parameter nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=5500, Ctrl-x to boot up. You will see Ubuntu boot up successfully, edit /etc/default/grub, add parameter nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=5500 again, execute sudo update-grub. So that every time boot up will contain this parameter in the grub automatically, no more manually edit.

https://community.wd.com/t/linux-support-for-wd-black-nvme-2018/225446/9