All data gone on My Book Studio II

Doing a sudo find, the items I found are at these locations:

    /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.wdc.drivemanagerservice.plist

    /Library/Application Support/WesternDigital

The first one is a daemon that you’ll need to unload with this command:

    sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.wdc.drivemanagerservice.plist

To verify it’s been unloaded, execute this command:

    sudo launchctl list | grep -i wdc

Next, remove the daemon descriptor file:

    sudo rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.wdc.drivemanagerservice.plist

After that, remove the folder.  Either copy/paste this exactly or make sure you type it exactly since the “rm” (remove) command doesn’t just put things in the Trash, and the recursive/force (R and f) options can be dangerous if you give it the wrong path to remove.

    sudo rm -Rf ‘/Library/Application Support/WesternDigital’

I’m using my My Book Studio II by way of eSATA (PC Card in a MacBook Pro 17") rather than USB or FireWire, but I do remember that to configure it after buying it, I had to plug it in as USB rather than as FireWire or eSATA, so my guess is that the problem may be due to the device being plugged in by another manner than USB, and Mavericks somehow is doing something different with the IO registry than the software expected, causing the WD software to send a reconfigure or erase command.  If anyone has had these problems with a USB connection, please add that to this forum.  If not, feel free to include what connection you had that was present upon loss.  Thankfully I haven’t upgraded to Mavericks yet.

If you have experienced data loss with the following criteria then please open support cases with both Western Digital and Apple support:

  • MacOS Mavericks 10.9
  • WD Drive Manager / Raid Manager software installed
  • data loss after a restart
  • drives initialised to a single MyBook partition with exposed EFI partition
  • loss of all existing partitions and directory structures

If you are an Apple developer then please report an issue with Apple Bug Reporter and reference #15360478.

I have just finnish running Stellar Phoenix, which I think is one of the best data recovery software, and the unthinkable happened - it hasn’t found a single file in the 4TB and 6TB drives.

I am trying Data Rescue now but I’m already panicking.

Have you guys got a good result with any data recovery?


Stormstereo wrote:

WD has recommended to uninstall any WD software (in my case, the WD drive manager). The only way to do so properly is to use the installer, which has an uninstall option. BUT, that software has been removed from the website. What to do now?

 

Best.


To completely uninstall the WD Drive Manger from your Mac, open a terminal window and issue the following commands in order:

 

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.wdc.WDDMservice.plist

 

sudo rm -R /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.wdc.drivemanagerservice.plist

 

sudo rm -R /var/tmp/com.WD.WDDriveManagerService

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I already just moved the WD Application to the trash and emptied the trash.  Was this a big mistake?

Any word on when a fix will be coming and if it will be coming from WD or from Apple?

Thank you.

That last one should also include a “-R” since /var/tmp/com.WD.WDDriveManagerService is a directory, so:

sudo rm -R /var/tmp/com.WD.WDDriveManagerService

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garywade wrote:

That last one should also include a “-R” since /var/tmp/com.WD.WDDriveManagerService is a directory, so:

 

sudo rm -R /var/tmp/com.WD.WDDriveManagerService

Thanks for the heads up.  We fixed it.

WD contact me and offered me a free data recovery. I drive to a WD partner today and get my RAID tested. They confirm that it’s a software-level corruption and the hardware is OK. They’ll do their best and recover the data free of charge for me. Though they don’t give any garantee and especially for the folder architecture. I feel weird that they don’t even have one MAC machine. So they’ll just format another disk ( I provide it) to NTFS and write any data recovered.

Well, finger crossed. Good luck for me.

I still hope that WD will give some magic software fix and my data will all be back.

All my data gone too iTB from a Mybook studio II, any sign of a fix?  I have deleted all WD software that I can see from my Mac and it is still wiping the drive clear.

Yup. Me too. My WD MyBook Studio Edition for Mac does not even show up in the finder as attached to the Mac. And, in my case anyway, the back up of the drive is grayed out in the Seagate Drive I have it backed up on. I sure hope these guys find a software solution and let us have it for free. I think they owe us that much!

In the mean time I am pulling all my backup drives until Apple and WD and any others affected get this whole thing straightened out…assuming that they do…

Peterjw7 and BruceB909, Please check your private messages.

Interesting, all this was reported to WD before Mavericks was even officially released!

Same case, WD MyBook Studio II (RAID 1) doesn’t even show up in finder. Disk utility reports partition errors. Scanning for partitions reveals two EFI EPS and HFS+ partitions (empty). 300GB of iMovie footage gone!

Are WD any closer to resolving this issue? It’s shocking that they have been made aware of this issue well in advance of the  public Mavericks release and still proceeded without any warning to their customers.

What I particullary appreciate from WD is an email at 23:55 on Friday asking me to contact them if I’ve been affected, only for me to then noitce that they UK email support team on work mon-fri…genius!

I’ve had 1 of my 2 drives be affected by this issue, I affraid to plug my ‘good’ drive in just in case it wipes it… Ive tried to delete WD raid manager but other than that I’ve had no direction from WD.

Same issue here. WD My Book Studio II was conntected using USB to my MacBook Pro during upgrade to Mavericks. A couple days later, my partition (HFS+) were gone and replaced by a EFI EPS and a HFS+ partition.

Drive was configured as RAID 1 using the WD Raid Manager Utility.

Utility was still installed during/after the upgrade.

This just happened to me tonight…:confounded:

Any guess if there is a possible solution from WD to recover the files at all?

QUESTION RE RECOMMENDATION TO UNINSTALL WD DRIVE MANAGER:

According to the My Book Studio II user manual the “WD Drive Manager enables Safe ShutdownTM” making sure that the drive can’t be switched off during write operations. For example during or after a Time Machine backup you can hear the drive writing or defragmenting files. Switching the drive off in the middle of a write operation would result in damaged files. Now that WD recommends to uninstall WD Drive Manager - wouldn’t that be dangerous? How should I know when is the correct = safe moment to switch off my drive?

Many thanks.

coxorange wrote:

QUESTION RE RECOMMENDATION TO UNINSTALL WD DRIVE MANAGER:

 

According to the My Book Studio II user manual the “WD Drive Manager enables Safe ShutdownTM” making sure that the drive can’t be switched off during write operations. For example during or after a Time Machine backup you can hear the drive writing or defragmenting files. Switching the drive off in the middle of a write operation would result in damaged files. Now that WD recommends to uninstall WD Drive Manager - wouldn’t that be dangerous? How should I know when is the correct = safe moment to switch off my drive?

 

Many thanks.

We have escalated your concerns and requested for Support to contact you.

I have follwed these and verified several times.  I have also removed the previously referenced file.

I have done a search under /Library and /System as user root : ls -lR * | grep -i wd, and examined results to see if anything missed.  I have done a search as user root from /Applications for WDDriveManager : ls -Rl | grep WDDriveManager, and am getting no results.

Would it supposedly be safe to upgrade to Mavericks?  I am currently on Mountain Lion.  I have several WD branded ‘drives’, ie a drive with enclosure, that are external back up drives for internal storage.

One of the external drives, a My Book Studio 2TB which is partitioned into two 1TB volumes which checked out fine on my wife’s 2011 iMac with Mavericks.  That iMac has never had any external storage attached and has no indication I could find of any WD software, etc. 

I found references to the included apps and utilities on one of the drives itself in a folder, and removed those.  

Hi guys,

It seems like Wondershare may be a solution to retrieve some of lost data.

__https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5475136?start=240&tstart=0   (The middle of the page posted by jsac88)

Let’s try to help each others out before WD figures out a solution and retrieve our data back.