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

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

I suddenly lost nearly 1 TB data in my MyBook Studio II (RAID 1) after I upgraded to OSX Maverick. The data is VERY IMPORTANT to me, including thousands of photos and my Ph.D. research. This is ironic that the two hard drives are both healthy but ALL the data is GONE.

After I lost the data, I started googling about this issue, and found out that this issue had been reported a few weeks ago. WD should warn their customers once this issue was reported, but WD did not. They should report this issue on the most popular websites, like Engadget, CNET, and even report it on news. Not just sending a email to the registered customers. I was not a registered customer, and so I did not get any notice. Even today, most of WD users don’t know this issue, and the number of victims is still increasing.

I am not interested in knowing the technical problem that causes this issue. The only thing I care is how I can recover my data. I just bought a Seagate external hard drive and Disk Drill Pro to rescue my data. Fortunately, the data is still there and I am able to recover it, however the filename and directory will be disordered. Some files are useless if I don’t know their original filenames and directories.

I am still waiting for the offical response from WD telling us what we have to do in this situation. I was wondering if WD is working on the solution that can recover the data including the filename and directory, or WD is doing nothing, and we should rescue the data by ourself.

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So - I was simply able to go to the Applications folder and drag/drop the WD programs into the trash.  There were a few others in the Library/Application Support folder, too, which I also deleted.

J

Well, a cold start due to an iTunes CD burn lock-up wiped the RAID1 status of my two WD MyBook Thunderbolt Duo devices. They were hooked on my iMac 27 (updated for Mavericks) without problems for two days. Although I’m not sure, whether I used them actively after the OS X update.

According to your advice and if you want to be on the safe side, you should have always one device running and the other disconnected. Then, the value of the RAID1 philosophy is somewhat compromised…

JKWalker111 wrote:

So - I was simply able to go to the Applications folder and drag/drop the WD programs into the trash.  There were a few others in the Library/Application Support folder, too, which I also deleted.

J

Steps to completely remove WD SmartWare from your Mac:

  • Run the SmartWare uninstaller application located in /Applications/
  • Using Apple’s Activity Monitor from /Applications/Utilities quit the following processes:

WDDMService

WD Quick View

SmartwareServerApp

  • Delete /Library/LaunchDeamons/com.wdc.WDDMService.plist (Entry that causes WDDM to start.)
  • Delete /Library/LaunchDeamons/com.wdc.WDSmartWareServer.plist (Entry that causes the SmartWare Server to start.)
  • Delete /Applications Support/WDSmartware (Removes all SmartWare support programs)
  • Delete /Application/WDSmartWare (SmartWare user interface)
  • Delete Library/Preferences/com.wdc.smartware.plist
  • From System Preferences->Users Login Items remove WDQuickview for all users. (Entry that runs WD Quick View when a user logs in. There should be a single entry for all users. Deleting it from one any account should remove it for all accounts.)

If my OS is 10.8.5. Do I still need to remove the WD SmartWare??

Hi, just chiming in as yet another pretty pissed off Apple/WD customer. My issue is that this happened to three drives (so far), one Lacie and two Seagate drives, one USB and two firewire800. They were all wiped and renamed/partitioned into “MyBook” and “EFI.” Unfortunately I have just returned from two months on assignment and plugged in my drives to back them up but never had a chance since they were wiped immediately. So obviously I am pretty interested in a resolution to this problem that restores access to the data on my drives. I have one WD MyBook drive still attached via USB that I use for Time Machine, it has not been affected. I have searched and attempted to purge all WD software, preferences and launcher items. Please let me know what the status is with this issue, and if I need to try and return to an older version of Mac Os X. Thank you.

edman wrote:

If my OS is 10.8.5. Do I still need to remove the WD SmartWare??

Hello,

Yes we would advise that you still remove this software.

ofquiet wrote:

Hi, just chiming in as yet another pretty pissed off Apple/WD customer. My issue is that this happened to three drives (so far), one Lacie and two Seagate drives, one USB and two firewire800. They were all wiped and renamed/partitioned into “MyBook” and “EFI.” Unfortunately I have just returned from two months on assignment and plugged in my drives to back them up but never had a chance since they were wiped immediately. So obviously I am pretty interested in a resolution to this problem that restores access to the data on my drives. I have one WD MyBook drive still attached via USB that I use for Time Machine, it has not been affected. I have searched and attempted to purge all WD software, preferences and launcher items. Please let me know what the status is with this issue, and if I need to try and return to an older version of Mac Os X. Thank you.

Hello,

I’m really sorry that your devices experienced complications.  I have asked someone from our support staff to contact you.

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.

I am struggling with tech support regarding my WD 2 TB Raid 1 drive.

I can not get answers to:

  1. I have removed the WD raid software from my Mac. Can I use the drive without it. Several people on MacRumors have stated that they are losing data even though they were not using the WD raid software. I do not know if this is true.

  2. Where do I send a copy of the receipt for the software I was told to purchase to reinstate my drive.

  3. is new software being written to maintain and monitor the WD raid drives?

  4. This seems to be a very widespread problem, affecting a lot of WD customers. It seems that WD did not catch this problem during the several development releases and final golden edition release of Mavericks from Apple. WD seems like a large and responsible company. Was this missed?

  5. There seems to be an ongoing conflict between raid drivers from Apple and those from WD. Which should we use?
    I am concerned because I am getting conflicting instructions on what to do.

Is it possible to post solutions somewhere so we can move past this issue?

Thank you.

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…What are we to do when we’ve followed your instructions regrading contacting WD customer Service for further assistance AND three days later you have not provided further assistance?

I got very detailed help from WD support, after answering a series of question. I gave rather specific hints with numerous screenshots about the status of my Mac, time of its Update to Mavericks, the details of the WD MyBook software and hook-up (two MyBook Thunderbolt Duo 2x3TB and 2x4TB) as well as about the activity at the time of the RAID1 crash a few days later. It happened during a lock-up while burning an audio CD using the updated  tunes 11.1.2.

I have received detailed recommendations on how to proceed with a partner recovery software. This might not be appropriate for all the crashes which are now being reported (crashes with LaCies and USB etc. might have other causes).

I had the time so far to attempt recovery.

RobertKrause and marksalmon, I have asked our support team to contact you.

Hi,

I cannot pass through the first step: when I run the uninstaller, the process hangs indefinitely. I then need to force-quit the uninstaller. I tried this repeatadly. Is there a workaround? 

Thanks

Lost my data on My Passport Studio 1TB.

I also have MyBook Studio 6tb no data loss, MyBook Studio 2tb no data loss.

Sent email message for support 3 days ago and no reply yet.

Why didn’t they test the their software before the release?

They had months before the final release of Mavericks.