If Apple listens to their support people, they know about the issue because I certainly told them about it. In my situation with a 1T Mybook, a couple of days after upgrading to Mavericks, all the backup dates dissappeared from Time Machine. I disconnected it preparing for a new drive. Called Apple to see one last time if I could work through the problem as I am not very tech savy, and they asked to have it reconnected. I did and lo and behold, the dates reappeared and to date is holding steady. I haven’t checked for individual files as I am frankly scared to mess with it until I have to but, in the meantime, I am now using the MyBook as backup to my new drive.
The releases all say contact WD if you are experiencing this problem but I can’t seem to jump the obstacle on the Contacts website which has lost the registration of my Passport Elite and doesn’t seem to like any info I offer.
I actually managed to do a backup last week but now the device is back in invisible limbo.
I’m a bit late to the party - I’ve only known about the issue with Mavericks and WD drives for a few days, and have been using my WD Mybook RAID for a few days after installing Mavericks.
I have not seen any issues so far, should I assume all is well?
Thanks
James
Hello cosmicpop
I would be careful and disconnect the drive and wait for “clearance”. Particularly when the RAID status or formatting of your drive was done with WD software.
I would temporarily archive data on another (single) disk, set up and formatted with Apple Disk Utilities.
The cause of the many crashes after Mavericks update has not been clearly identified. But to my belief, Apple is at least part of the problem: they increasingly twiddle with their updates. Mavericks was the worst so far with too many unnecessary changes, obsolete drivers, long fiddling to get back to operation and useless or misleading simplifications.
That may be standard for Microsoft product, but not Apple’s! Steve Jobs would call his staff into the wood shack…
The thing I find really shocking is that this was not picked up in beta testing. Did no one at Western Digital test Mavericks? And if they did, how did they miss this? And if indeed they did not miss this, why did they not fix the issue before Mavericks was released to the public? Apple is also at fault here, as they should also have identified this issue in beta testing. That is what beta testing is for! This is no joke. You will lose customers over this. Even if WD and Apple accept no responsibility for their customer’s data, allowing this issue to occur was a serious oversight.
I personally had a lot of my data backed up, but was in the process of reorganising my archive and there is some data that was not backed up. That bit is my fault. My responsibility is to back up my data. However, Apple and Western Digital’s responsibility is to thouroughly test their products. Seems like everyone failed in their responsibility here then.
While there is definitely an issue with Western Digital Software it seems the issue is not solely confined to Western Digital so whatever drives you use do not update to 10.9 without making sure you have backed up all your data (both on your machine and on any external hard drives you own) and checking with both Apple and your Hard Drive manufacturer to see if there are any known issues specific to your devices. In fact, I would hold off updating to Mavericks at all until Apple release an update that addresses the issues people are seeing with external drives.
For myself, initially I had no issues with WD and Seagate portable drives plugged into my Laptop running Mavericks, and in fact I found the OS overall to be an improvement. However, it was only when I installed the OS on my iMac a week later and plugged in a RAID array to that machine that I encountered an issue. I hadn’t plugged any of my RAID configured drives into my laptop during that first week of running Mavericks. I should have tested that, but then, I’m not a beta tester (or perhaps maybe I am now…)
Here’s what happened: After installing 10.9 on my iMac I plugged in the external hard drive RAID Array containing 4 x 4TB drives hardware configured to RAID 5 (which I had named 12TB RAID) and it showed up with 2 partitions, one an EFI partition and the other named as MyBook. It was displaying the entire array with it’s 12TB capacity as blank.
I since plugged the drive into a Macbook Pro running 10.8.5 where the drive showed up on the desktop as just the MyBook partition, again 12TB of free space. The EFI partition does not show up as mounted on the desktop. Running a quick scan on the drive with Data Recovery Software showed there is at least some data on the drive somewhere. Rather than go through the whole scan and recover process I cancelled the scan and ejected the drive.
Thanks to some info on an Apple discussion board (link below) which is also listed in posts here I found some Western Digital software on my iMac I never knew existed. I never installed this, it wasn’t in my Applications folder and it never showed up in a spotlight search but lo and behold there it was in:
/Library/Application Support (WDDriveManager)
/Library/LaunchDaemons (com.wdc.drivemanagerservice.plist)
I ran the WD uninstaller software - http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=124&sid=214&lang=en and removed the uninstaller pref file which appeared in /Library/LaunchDaemons after running the uininstaller.
With this Western Digital Software uninstalled and the computer running back on Mountain Lion I restarted my machine and plugged in the RAID drive but it still shows up blank.
I’ve reported the issue to Apple Tech support and they are currently communicating with me and trying to find a resolution to this alongside the update to the Western Digital software that is being worked on. Hopefully that will also mean an update to Mavericks that will resolve these incompatability issues. To be honest, I never use any software to control my drives and configure them using disk utility or the windows management tools. Putting it politely, I am more than annoyed that the WD files I found squirrelled away in the Library on my Mac appear to be the culprit. I didn’t even have the apps installed. How these files got on my machine is a mystery to me.
For more info on the various issues around this go to this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5475136?start=435&tstart=0
FYI this was my particular hardware set up when the issue occured, including the Hard Drive enclosure.
iMac:
27 inch mid 2011
3.4 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1333 Mhz DDR3 RAM
HD Enclosue:
OWC Mercury Rack Pro http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MRP1UF8U3EP/
Connected to iMac via Firewire 800 (DAS, no daisy chaining)
Hardware RAID (Configured to RAID 5)
Drives:
#Seagate 4TB FW: CC52 (x4)
Again, my main question is how and why was this not picked up in Beta testing? Can someone give an answer to that?
Hi Woodley
Thanks for the advice.
As soon as I wrote that I cleared a bit of space from my non-WD time machine drive and added my WD disk to the time machine schedule, it’s backing up as I speak. I’ll disconnect the WD drive as soon as it’s done.
Thanks again.
James
Hi blindeyetom
As an ex professional software tester myself, I can maybe shed a bit of light on this.
It’s true that beta testing should’ve caught this, but looking at WD’s comments so far, it seems that this issue happens only with certain combinations of software.
It’s impossible to test with every combination of software and hardware, even on the relatively closed eco system of Mac OS X.
Without knowing how the innards of WD engineering works I can’t tell what happened, but drawing on personal experience I can imagine that WD send an engineer or two to WWDC every year to keep up to date with the latest advancements in the Apple world, specifically the disk access side of things.
It might be that Apple told them that nothing much is happening to the various APIs that WD use, so there’s nothing to worry about. WD probably arrived back at the office with no real news for the rest of the engineering team.
This news probably pushed WD to simply conduct low-priority testing with Mavericks and their disks, which probably consists of simply connecting a hard-drive to a Mavericks machine to see if it works.
I used to work for a company that was very sensitive to font-handling changes to Mac OS X. We’d go through this exact process, but occasionally we got stung by bugs or unforeseen changes to Mac OS X that we weren’t told about.
I’m not trying to defend WD, but I imagine there’s a lot more at play here than meets the eye. I suspect it’s Apple’s fault for either introducing a bug, or simply forgetting to mention to WD that an API change might effect them.
James
cosmicpop thanks for the info. Yes I can imagine such a scenario happening, and it gives me cause for pause that it could be such a casual affair, but I still don’t quite understand how and why this got missed. Not just by WD or Apple engineers, but by other beta testers. The fact is that it’s widespread enough for WD to tell people to uninstall the software. Surely someone must have come across this issue during beta testing and reported it to WD and/or Apple. Basically the only thing I can hope for is that it will make these companies more vigilant in future. It’s certainly made me more paranoid. Erasing, repartitioning, (or whatever it is exactly that’s happened - no one can properly explain it to me still) a hard drive is not a minor consequence and I really cannot believe it is an issue that was completely missed until after public release. I’m more inclined to believe it is something that arose but was shrugged off or ignored. And that is what I’m really trying to find out. Did someone, anyone, encounter this issue before public release. If so, and if it was reported, why was it not addressed…
Hi guys,
The same problem with me a Western Digital service erase my external Lacie drive which repartition and renamed to MyBook and create problems with Apple Time capsule which was mount as EFI.
The service was coming from a WD Disk that I have and it was this one.
When I erased the service my time capsule work just fine. But I have lost all my External LaCie data in which was all my photos.
Please if WD find a solution because we need it ungently
Also would like to add that I haven’t install any WD software on my Mac expected the service above
I have an iMac (almost 2 years old) and a six months old WD My Book Studio 3T (connected USB2).
I have downloaded Maverick on the very first day without knowing this problem.
Since I have the Maverick, The Finder does not show my External Hard Drive.
I did not lose any data from my External HD.
I just have to unplug the Hard Drive and then it appears in the Finder.
Any advise how can I avoid the unplugging? I am afraid it is going to crash one day.
Hi Guys,
I would like to know from WD when they think they will fix this issue.
Since i installed Mavericks i havo no access to my External My book studio II where is located very importants files.
I’m waiting that the solve this issue to plug again my HD.
Please, someone know what they’re doing and if there’s some prevision?
Thanks
WD must be swarmed or what…till now no response from them for my trouble ticket. Seriously this data loss is my worst nightmare ever…
I just updated to Maverick and all my files are gone. Did any one find a solution yet?
I’ve downloaded the latest WD software and it’s made no difference. My WD drive still shows up in “About this Mac” but doesn’t show up on the desktop. And to add insult to injury, I’m told I need to update the firmware on my older USB WD drive but when I go through the process it tells me it’s updating the firmware while two hours pass and the process is never finished and I can’t do anything but quit the update. I’ve said it before but may I repeat: I will never again buy a Western Digital product, no matter how sorry for them I may feel in their overwork, confusion and grief. Does anyone know what the chances would be of returning this Thunderbolt Duo (4TB) drive (3 weeks old) and getting a refund?
I waited three weeks for a response, and, since there’s no way to follow up an existing case number, opened 3 cases, all of them ignored. Suddenly - perhaps it was my assurance that I would never buy asnother WD product - something shook loose and I’ve had 3 phone calls in the past week, all of them, alas, coming while I was in the car and on lines so bad that it sounded as if they were coming from the Space Station via a string and tin can. I rang them back this afternoon and after a lot of fiddling, spoke to someone who told me the tech people only worked between 8am and 11am and could I ring back then? I don’t know whether that’s Australian eastern time or US west coast time or something in between. They are truly hopeless and I despair of ever being able to use my 3 weeks old Thunderbolt drive. The basic fact is: don’t buy a WD product!!!
1 Like
Hello Sharlene
Mavericks – its name chimes with annoying results! Aside from many useless or negative changes, the frequently reported data losses are unforgivable. Apple is at least part of the problem.
If you tell your manufacturer support exactly what happened, there might be an easy way out. I would immediately disconnect the external drive and wait for help.
But for any help you need to summarize your setup.
- What external Drive, Make, USB, Firewire or Thunderbolt was affected?
- How was the external drive set up (WD Software, Apple Disk Utilities; disk Format Mac OS extended (HFS+), FAT32, exFAT or NTFS?
- Did you work with RAID 1 on a double disk drive (mirrored disks)?
- Did you use the drive for Time Machine Backup?
- Was the external drive connected with the Mac during the update?
- Did you have a Mac lockup before the data was gone?
- etc.
Check for some similar cases within the WD community.
Good luck! Woodley43
After I updated to mavericks, I lost all my data on WD mybook II 2G. WD doesn’t do any useful way to help me recovery data. Just tell me use disk drill. but it found just no structure files. I am very disapoointed for WD.
I use EasyRecovery to recover the data twice. But many of the files recovered are corrupted. Not mention all data are messed up and all photos become no date and mixed together.
And, most importantly, the Aperture Library files that is about 500G was not able to recover.
I have spent many many hours in the issue and still very frustrated.
Tired and upset of WD’s inaction to help with resolution of the situation, I tried to do data recovery on my studio II HDD, hold and behold, I managed to do my recovery from that formatted HDD, all 600GB of photos, raw files or not. Strangely speaking, some files have dates in them, some doesn’t…but I guess given how disasterous it has been so far, having the files back is a good thing, many more hours need to put it to rebuild my lightroom library.
And may I say this, the new software released by WD doesn’t fix the issue, although they explicitly stated that it fixes the issue. They might have fixed the vulnerability issue but **bleep** no, it doesn’t alleviate any of the data loss issue. I wish you folks all the best of luck and may the force be with you.
Welcome to the Club?
The damage is done. It is not the WD hardware but WD software in combination with Apples unnecessary fiddling within its OS X more recent updates. Many other peripherals (Printers etc) have been affected. Mavericks annoyed Mac users with many unnecessary program changes and useless addings. Unfortunately Beta testing did not unravel any problems with WD hardware.
Data loss has affected a minority of the many WD customers. Its a nightmare for all of us. Therefore I shall change my strategy of archiving data while still depending on excellent WD hardware.
Trashing or returning rather new Drives is unnecessary: if your data are gone, reformat the drive using Apple Disk Utilities first to exFAT – to unblock the used space – and than to HFS+ again. If you have a DUO, partition it with Apple Disk Utilities for RAID1 to mirror the two disks. No data loss has been reported by WD users who formatted or partitioned their WD drives with Apple Disk Utilities. Data loss reported on LaCies or other makes must have had other causes…
