WD SSD RAIDS not functioning with M Series Apple Silicon and Monterey

G-Technology G-SPEED & G-SAFE
1

Any chance someone from Western Digital could provide an honest and useful update on this issue?

I have two $10K SSD raids that are absolutely useless. I’ve tried all the hacks, all the installs from Promise, and I still have two doorstops.

Can I get a refund since these are useless - please be honest and tell us if you have no intention of supporting these units into the future.

2

Hi @welshofer,

Have you opened a Support Case? If not opened, for more information, please contact the WD Technical Support team for the best assistance and troubleshooting:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/ask

3

Thank you for your response.

I know you mean well, and I certainly appreciate that, but this is a widely known. issue. Your product (the SSD Shuttle RAID series) does not work on Monterey with M1 silicon, and will not work at all on the next version of macOS (the beta will report this immediately as the driver attempts to load). I would at least like to reliably mount my devices under Monterey to begin copying off the information before they become permanently useless.

I have had multiple support cases and have spent many, many hours on the phone with your support agents. So far the best answers have been to use the Promise drivers (which results in spotty mounting and speed ~ 1/10th the expected, with eventual crashes), or a suggestion that I reformat the drives as exFAT. As it stands, if I cannot get this resolved soon, or at least hear competent answers, I will need to seek a refund. These very expensive units are currently useless.

Since the drives won’t reliably mount long enough to backup, and I don’t yet have another solution to copy the data, neither of these are options.

On the whole, this is a simple question:

  • When will Western Digital update their software to support macOS Monterey on M1 silicon?
  • When will Western Digital release software that will support macOS Ventura?

I would hope these are easy questions.

When this issue first came up last fall when Monterey shipped, Western Digital acted as if the release of the latest macOS came as a surprise, which it certainly didn’t. Apple has been telling manufacturers for years that kernel extensions will be phased out, and the reckoning is upon you. I worked at Apple during this time, I was in those meetings. This was not a surprise and Western Digital (or perhaps I should say Promise?) had years to deal with this. Ventura is the death of this model. Will Western Digital adapt, or are these products dead in the water?

Thank you for your time.

4

Any updates?

Ventura will not support kernel extensions. What will WD do for all of the SSD RAID users then? It will hit everyone, not just M1 / M2 silicon Macs.

Thank you for your time.

5

Turns out WD has an updated driver. I think they wanted to keep it a secret:

https://support-en.g-technology.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/31112/kw/m1

Installed on a Mac Studio and works fine.

6

Next up, macOS Ventura support. Kernel extensions will NOT execute under Ventura.