External Drives for Mac Experiencing Data Loss with Maverick OS -- UPDATED FOR NOVEMBER 6, 2013

— Updated November 6, 2013 —

On October 30th, 2013 Western Digital informed registered customers of affected products via E-mail regarding reports of Western Digital and other external HDD products experiencing data loss when updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9).  Our investigation to date has found that for a small percentage of customers that have the WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and/or WD SmartWare software applications installed on their Mac, there can be cases of a repartition and reformat of their Direct Attached Storage (DAS) devices without customer acknowledgement which can result in data loss.  

 

WD has been tracking this issue closely through our WD Forum and through our Technical Support hotline and the occurrence rate of this event has been very low.  A specific set of conditions and timing sequences between the OS and the WD software utilities has to occur to cause this issue.  Should this event occur, the data on the product can likely be recovered with a third party software utility if the customer stops using the device immediately after the OS X Mavericks (10.9) upgrade.  WD will be issuing updated versions of these software applications that resolve this issue.

 

WD strongly urges our customers to uninstall these software applications before updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9), or delay upgrading until we provide an update to the applications.  If you have already upgraded to Mavericks,  WD recommends that you remove these applications and restart your computer.  If you have already upgraded to Mavericks and are experiencing difficulty in accessing your external hard drive,  please do not save anything to the drive, disconnect the drive from your computer, and contact Western Digital Customer Service at http://support.wdc.com/contact/.

— Updated November 5, 2013 —

There are reports of Western Digital and other external HDD products experiencing data loss when updating to Apple’s OS X Mavericks (10.9).  Western Digital is urgently investigating these reports and the possible connection to the WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and WD SmartWare software applications. 

 

Until the issue is understood and the cause identified, WD strongly urges our customers to uninstall these software applications on their systems before updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9), or delay upgrading.  If you have already upgraded to Mavericks, WD recommends that you remove these applications and restart your computer. WD has removed these software applications from our web site solely as a precaution as we investigate this issue.

If you have already upgraded to Mavericks and are experiencing difficulty in accessing your external hard drive, please do not save anything to the drive, disconnect the drive from your computer, and contact Western Digital Customer Service at http://support.wdc.com/country/ for further assistance.

You can now download the WD Software Uninstaller.  This utility will remove Mac WD SmartWare and WD Drive Manager software.  You can find the uninstaller under any of the Mac Drive Downloads sections such as the My Book Studio below.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=124&sid=214&lang=en

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I have had multiple cases of data loss on WD drives since upgrading to Mavericks, and I do not use any WD software. I was using a 4-bay PROBOX USB3 enclosure with 4 independant drives, each with 1 volume, no RAID.

I have managed to copy large files off the WD drive onto my MBP internal drive using the finder, and then find that they are not identical. This problem is intermittent, does not generate any Finder errors, and the drives all show 100% health via SMART.

The configuration was rock-solid before Mavericks, and has trashed the directories of 4 drives since I upgraded last week.

I am attempting to find a solid replication case for this, but it is difficult. I have not been able to replicate the issue on another 2-bay USB2 dock that I have (different manufacturer).

One thing is clear: only one thing changed – I upgraded to Mavericks.

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If I remove the software noted in the email, will I still be able to access the data from the External Drive? My Itunes is on my WD external drive, if I remove the software will I still be able to access my music. The only piece of software I have on my desktop is a WD SMARTWARE Folder. I never use the software in the folder.

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The two MyBooks Thunderbolt Duo worked perfectly as RAID 1 archives after installing OS X10.9 some weeks ago. That has changed after I tried to burn - the first time with 10.9 - an audio CD: I got the puzzling error message, that the Super Drive were already busy. I restarted the i7 SSD iMac and it happended again, so I turned the Mac off and on again. Then I was able to burn the CD as usual, however the thumbnails of the two myBooks have changed. I cannot see any data, although Data Information tells me that considerable storage space is used. Then I “complained” with WD Support and they recommended (as shown) uninstalling WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and WDSmartWare. 

Today I checked with WD Drive Utilities the two MyBooks. The Diagoses were O.K. When I checked the RAID-Verwaltung (German; RAID Management in English?) the actual RAID Status was single Drives (DEVICE_CONFIGURATION_JBOD) and not RAID 1 any more!

My question: How can I get to my data or how can I change back to the RAID1 status without loosing the data?

I agree. After installing Mavericks I was troubleshooting and reinstalling drivers for days. Many Apps did not work anymore, although the updates slowly arrive. As total divergence of the old Apple philosophy, I had to use endless library cleaning terminal commands to get a new Canon network printer running again. Canon provided the procedures after updating from OS X10.6 to 10.7 already. Now it seems, that the first time I used the Super Drive (CD-DVD Drive) trying to burn an audio CD with baffling error messages (Drive already used…). After this, the RAID1 status of the two MyBook archives changed to JBOD.

The changes of OS X10.8 to 10.9 I find unnecessary (iBooks could be an App, Maps we have already the same on other channels). Some changes are even a step back (calendar graphics), the so much more user friendly Office suite iWorks is free, but degraded an of limited use!

MadOverlord wrote:

I have had multiple cases of data loss on WD drives since upgrading to Mavericks, and I do not use any WD software. I was using a 4-bay PROBOX USB3 enclosure with 4 independant drives, each with 1 volume, no RAID.

 

I have managed to copy large files off the WD drive onto my MBP internal drive using the finder, and then find that they are not identical. This problem is intermittent, does not generate any Finder errors, and the drives all show 100% health via SMART.

 

The configuration was rock-solid before Mavericks, and has trashed the directories of 4 drives since I upgraded last week.

 

I am attempting to find a solid replication case for this, but it is difficult. I have not been able to replicate the issue on another 2-bay USB2 dock that I have (different manufacturer).

 

One thing is clear: only one thing changed – I upgraded to Mavericks.

greyhound85034 wrote:

If I remove the software noted in the email, will I still be able to access the data from the External Drive? My Itunes is on my WD external drive, if I remove the software will I still be able to access my music. The only piece of software I have on my desktop is a WD SMARTWARE Folder. I never use the software in the folder.

Yes.

Data on the drive can be accessed without any software. 

My test system has a WD MB Studio II connected via Firewire 800 and occasionally also has a Seagate FreeAgent (portable) which I connect via FW 800.  IIRC both had multiple partitions and on each one of those partiions was a Time Machine partition.

About a half dozen times during Mavericks testing and development my Seagate FA would “spontaneously reformat” and would be named “MyBook”.  Literally there was NO indication this was going to happen, just one day Time Machine would report it was no longer able to find it’s drive and I’d notice the 2 paritions on the Seagate FA had been replaced by a single “MyBook” parition.

After a few weeks I removed WD Drive Manager from the test system and didn’t have any further problems.  I don’t test software for WD or SG and didn’t think much about it.  I figured WD would have it resolved well before Maverciks actually got released to the public.

jb510 please create an Apple Bug Report… check private messge for details.

Beside removing the WD Drive manager SW, is it also necessary to get rid of the following Kernel Extensions in /System/Library/Extensions: WD1394HPDriver.kext: WD1394_64HPDriver.kext: WDUSBHPDriver.kext: WDUSB_64HPDriver.kext: Please give advice. Thank you

I have a MyBook Thunderbolt duo set to RAID 1 in mavericks that is currently operating just fine.

Is the WD Drive Manager the same as the WD utility drive manager that is having these issues? I am noticing that the utility (version 1.1.7.5) is still available for download but the drive manager (version 2.26 or similar) is not. Can someone confirm? Are these the same? I don’t think the utility software is running in the background for this drive performing tasks.

No, they are not the same. The WD Drive Utilities don’t run at all times, you run them when you need to configure your unit or to diagnose it. On the other hand WD Drive Manager, the suspected culprit, runs all the time and likely conflicted with Mavericks.

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Thank you.

Bill_S wrote:

There are reports of Western Digital and other external HDD products experiencing data loss when updating to Apple’s OS X Mavericks (10.9).  Western Digital is urgently investigating these reports and the possible connection to the WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and WD SmartWare software applications. 

 

Until the issue is understood and the cause identified, WD strongly urges our customers to uninstall these software applications on their systems before updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9), or delay upgrading.  If you have already upgraded to Mavericks, WD recommends that you remove these applications and restart your computer. WD has removed these software applications from our web site solely as a precaution as we investigate this issue.

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 have a MyBook Studio FW800 with 2x1TB drives, config’d as RAID 1 via the WD manager software.

i have NOT yet mounted it with my macbook pro via Mavericks, so my data should still be fine.

my plan is to install Mac OS 10.6 onto a different external drive, and back up my files that way while booted into 10.6.

my question: will i be able to get at the files this way without the WD Manager software installed? if not, could i have the installer for that software sent to me privately? it has been removed from the downloads area here on the WD website. thank you for addressing this situation.

You do not need the WD Drive Manager installed to access or backup data.

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thank you for the info! in that case, i should just be able to boot off the 10.6 DVD and back up from there (bypassing installing 10.6 onto an external drive), correct? and thank you once again for your prompt answers!

You should be able to. However, I would recommend using another Mac with the OS already installed (on the Internal drive) if you can.

I just bought, and have yet to use, a 2TB WD My Book external drive - 

I want to use it to keep my movies on a separate drive so i can edit them from that drive, using iMovie on my MAC.

do i need to worry about losing data on my MAC’s hard drive if I move MP4 files to the MyBook?

Is this issue only a problem if you are backing up data onto a WD drive, or are you saying not to use it for any reason until the issue is resolved?

THank you

Never trust important data to just one drive. You need a backup, that is a second copy on a different drive or storage device.

Joe 

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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

I have tried issuing these commands through the terminal but am running into a problem.  The first seems to take but the other two report file not found.  In the end, the Smartware remains installed and, although I can kill the processes in Activity Monitor, upon reboot they are back.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

J