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

uliana wrote:

Since this thread is posted as a sticky, can I ask whether the following line in the opening post still applies?

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.

 

As I posted in a thread on the portable drives forum, I have 4 My Passport Studio drives that I need WD Smartware to decrypt. I just upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mavericks thinking I would just need to download the latest Smartware firmware to access the drives. However, after reading that warning, I am afraid to try to access the drives, from fear of risking data loss. Have the issues that were causing some users to encounter problems 5 months ago when the November 6 update was posted been resolved?

Hi uliana,

Wait until I look into this. 

You will need to uninstall SmartWare and reinstall the latest version of it.  Also, if you have Drive Manager on your Mac, you will need to uninstall it as well.

Oh, and then you can plug in your Passport Studio drive.

I had trouble uninstalling SmartWare, as the instructions are not clear.

However, I seem to be able to access the data on one of the drives regardless (haven’t tried the other ones).

Here’s what happened:

Bear in mind that I had previously upgraded to Mavericks.

So starting from that position, to uninstall WD Smartware, I first went to the Applications folder and tried to run the Uninstall WD SmartWare application. The app opened and asked, Do you want to uninstall WD SmartWare? I answered affirmatively, after which an error message appeared: “The application has encountered an unexpected error and is now exiting.” I was not sure what to make of that. I didn’t see SmartWare listed in the apps folder, though. I did see a WD Drive Utilities app and a WD Security app listed (as before). I rebooted the computer.

I tried attaching the My Passport Studio drive to the computer, but instead of a window requesting the password to unlock the drive, which is what ordinarily would happen, instead I got a message saying the drive could not be read by the computer, ignore? vs eject?

I then downloaded the WD SmartWare Update for Mac version 3.1.0.14 file from the WD Support Downloads page, and installed it.
It spent several minutes classifying data on my computer (Passport Studio drive not attached to the computer yet).

When SmartWare finished the analysis of the files on the computer, I attached the drive and the unlock window appeared. I was able to access the files on the drive.

(I really, really hate that SmartWare categorizes data on my computer. I don’t need that function - I use Apple’s TimeMachine for scheduled backups. All I need the WD external drives to do is store data I save on them in an encrypted format. If there were a way to do that on the drives I have without needing to use SmartWare, I’d get rid of SmartWare completely.)

Actually, you don’t need SmartWare to encrypt the drive.  You can install WD Security for encrypting the drive.

http://support.wd.com/product/download.asp?groupid=223&sid=158&lang=en

How is the present situation?

If I buy now a drive, do not use the Smartware: are there any realistic chances of losing data?

And: what’t the use of using this Smartware. What are the advantages?

TonVH wrote:

How is the present situation?

 

If I buy now a drive, do not use the Smartware: are there any realistic chances of losing data?

 

And: what’t the use of using this Smartware. What are the advantages?

 

 

Yosemite public beta is not 100% compatible. WD Drive Manager unexpectedly quits if you delete or change the RAID mode on an external disk.
I recommend uninstall WD Drive Manager to avoid other problems, until WD releases a update.

Sebastian,

Can you please share on the steps on how did you recover your lost data as I am having similar issue with one of my WD 3 TB HDDs unaccessible currently after months of looking for a workable solution? Thanks

James

Hello since OS X Yosemite released few days ago.

Can you please check drivers compability so we wont have again a data losses.

Thanks,

WD Drive Manager is  NOT 100% compatible with Yosemite  - unexpectedly quits if you delete or change the RAID mode on an external disk.
I recommend uninstall WD Drive Manager to avoid other problems, and until WD releases a update.

if you need to erase the My Book Studio II using Disk Utility app in OSX.

HELP HELP HELP HELP

I’m a television travel journalist. I had all (I mean ALLLL) my footage backed up on My Passport Ultra. When I tried to access the data yesterday on all of the computer in the office, it’s not working. 

The drive manager can see that there is a disk connected but the files are unreadable!

The support website of WD is not working (500 network error, files not available). There is no phone support.

What can I do?! 

I had to go on air today saying that I wasn’t able to produce a story because of my (not) amazing external drive.

Does anyone know anything yet? My 3TB passport External just stopped working all of a sudden with a message that the “kernel extension is not from an identified developer” which singled out the WDUSBHPDriver.kext file. My laptop is too old to run Yosemite, so there’ s no chance of having a problem due to updating to a new OS. I uninstalled and reinstalled all WD software that was available, but no dice. I even tried restarting, zapping the PRAM, and plugging it back in again, only to get teh same message. This thread indicates that such problems have been going on for over a year now (hich would have been nice to know before buying) and does anyone have an answer yet?

On the other hand, if the drive is well and truly messed up (though I suspect it’s more the USB controller than the drive), what harm would there be in taking it out of the case and attaching it directly to my hardware via some other means? It’s not like breaking the warranty means anything when you count the cost of the drive versus the value of the data on it that may otherwise be lost!

Have you tried pulling the WDUSBHPDriver.kext file. When I got a Mac Passport external earlier this year I read about all the problems the WD software had caused people upgrading to Mavericks so I just ignored all the WD software and ran the drive as it came. No problems. I’d suggest pulling all the WD software from your computer, including  the WDUSBHPDriver.kext file and rebooting. It doesn’t sound like you have anything to lose doing that. 

Also, try it on another computer without any WD software and see what happens. If that doesn’t work, then taking the drive out of the case sounds like a reasonable last resort.

Yes, I tried those things.  I even took it to another Mac that had never had an external HD connected and tried it there. Oddly, they were running Win7 in Parallels at the time, and Windows recognized the drive immediately, even though the Mac could not mount it for access. I also set up my Ubuntu workstation to mount HFS drives, but it would not see the drive, either. Since I’m questioning whether it’s a .kext or a USB issue, I still lean toward removing the drive from the case and giving it a go with someone else’s USB hardware, or possibly bypassing USB altogether and seeing if it will mount as a SATA device. That’s a bit harder to do with a Mac, though, so I’m still hunting for a better alternative, like a newer .kext. Thanks.

This is the fix I used. I went into TERMINAL with the unrecognizable external disk connected. Diskutil repairvolume /dev/disk2s2. That failed. Then, diskutil reformat /dev/disk2s2. Success, then diskutil verifydisk /dev/disk2. Now it shows mounted and it’s back on my screen. May the force be with you!

I have a My passport for Mac. I can not access my data.  I keep trying but a couple of times only the folder appeared bu no files.  Now nothing appears. Can Anybody help.

I see there are some solutions above, read the whole thread first.

If nothing seems to work for you, since it’s 2015 and Yosemite has been out long enough, then contact support contact WD directly and demand that they help you, or at least clarify the situation about WD drives and Yosemite.

Just wondering if anyone received a solution to this data lost issue? I have been using WD My Book Studio without any issues for the past year or so and am using Mac OS 10.9.5. The hdd suddenly got wiped out yesterday when I realised Lightroom couldn’t locate the photos that I was working on. It was still working fine the day before. The drive was being renamed as “MyBook” and “EFI” initially and eventually only showing a single “MyBook” without any files in there. I have plugged the hdd into a Windows PC and was unable to locate any files. Just a blank hdd.

I have contacted WD’s support desk and was told that he has never heard of such a thing happening before and told me I must have reformatted the drive myself and suggested to refer me to a data recovery company. The quote was a shocking $1400-$2400 for the 3TB hdd!!

Would appreciate if anyone could update on whether anything could be done to salvage the data without having to spend that money.

I assume that no one ever found a data recovery solution for this unbelievable problem… I am UTTERLY disappointed with WD over this.
every single one of my 30+ employees in my office will be instructed to NEVER BUY ANOTHER PRODUCT MADE BY WESTERN DIGITAL.
Likewise my 15000 or so Twitter followers will be told about this.

dude - you’re not helpful for not posting A LINK to this hidden simple fix…

Yikes!!! 12 months and this comes and bites me in the rear!

Can’t even remember WHAT excactly that I did, but I had to register the the problem with WD, they had to acknowledge that I indeed had the problem, they provided me with a license and a fully working data recovery tool (which shall not be named…because I can’t remember) and I used said software to get my drive back.

Basically the data was mostly there, but either I did something wrong before I used the correct software (I think I did, but can’t be sure either way) or data was corrupted. I had stored a lot of GoPro raw footage and afterwards I got a lot of apparently random filenames (in series) and some corrupt avi files, some duplicates and some empty files. I tried editing the avi’s back together again but I gave up. I still have a security backup of everything for a another day, if I ever get the time.

Approx 50 % is intact.

I’ve learned this afterwards as well, this type of situation happens MOSTLY because Apple has lousy communications with companies and don’t give them enough information (not at all) about changes to the OS. Things that worked suddenly doesn’t anymore because of a small change somewhere…that’s life.

If I’ve learned something, one backup is NEVER sufficient. Never, ever, neverever. Main computer, daily use external drive, external drive offsite and/or cloud.