Q: Mybook studio raid 0, empty after installing Mavericks

Can you tell use what version of OS X it says when you choose 'Apple menu > About this Mac'. It's worrying if it is effecting older versions too.

Short answer: No. These drives were bought for backup reasons, I didn’t format with GUID as I never planned to boot from them.

They are just, well, regular USB and Firewire drives / enclosures, used for backups.

AKabasand Plotinus, yes. I double-checked. Nothing WD related on this Mavericks Mac, either in /Library nor /System or ~/Library. No Startup Daemons, no Launch Daemons, no nothing. This Mac is clean.

I am in the same boat as Don Hayes (although I don't do Mac support).  Knock on wood, I've not suffered the issues here so far.  I hope I'm not living on borrowed time.  I also hope the following information can help nail down a potential profile of the component(s) causing the corruption.

2 systems: 

2013 27" iMac

2013 13" MBA

iMac was upgraded to Mavericks straight out of the box, then I rebuilt this new install versus restoring or transferring anything from previous builds/machines.

MBA came with ML which was upgraded on general release of Mavericks.

I have never, ever installed any drive software on any of my OS X installs.  All drives in use (with the exception of the factory installed drives on the machines themselves) have been partitioned and formatted out of the box using disk utility.  It's also worth noting that none of the external drives are "Mac Edition" drives, just off the shelf retail external drives.

I have:

2 FW800, USB 2.0 WD 1TB drives.

1 USB 2.0 WD 750GB used as a former Airport Extreme shared drive.

NewerTechnology Voyager (FW800, USB 3.0, USB 2.0, e-Sata) Dock.

1 DataTale RS-4MT Thunderbolt enclosure with 4 Seagate Baracuda 3TB drives in RAID 10.

I just built the RS-4MT and transferred data from my legacy drives using the Voyager via USB 3 from the following:

2 WD 2TB Caviar Green

1 WD 2TB Caviar Black

2 WD 1TB Caviar Black

Also transfered from the 3 aforementioned external WD drives to the new RAID enclosure over the course of the last few days.  Numerous sleep and boot cycles as I've built out this machine.  So far, so good (knock on wood again).

I've also used the Voyager and another portable (WD Passport USB 3.0) drive with the MBA running Mavericks as well.  Again, so far so good. 

We are over 200 posts & 10 days into this issue, there are other theads on the topic too. WD's forum has one going back 4 weeks. How much more evidence do you need?

I'm not sure you want to be risking your data since you said you don't do Mac support.

You have mentioned all the keywords WD, RAID, Firewire, USB, Thunderbolt.

I would normally say 'be careful with your data', however that isn't appropriate here, it seems to be indiscriminate.

I think 'don't connect these disks to Mavericks' is the only sensible recommendation at this stage.

Thanks for the info, Kierants. As to your last paragraph: I find it higly unlikely- not to say utterly impossible that partioning a new HDD would cause other attached drives to be repartitioned, too. That would be pure horror.

To all of you affected here: we all know by now any ( remnant of) WD software is likely to be the culprit of this disaster.

There is a distinct 2nd possibility though: the exact chipset/ manufacturer of the hardware raid controller/ USB to Sata controller/ FireWire to Sata controller in your external enclosures, be they WD, LaCie, Iomega, Drobo, generic, whatever. It would be very interesting if all of you affected would post the Vendor ID and Product ID ( to be found in System Profiler). Determining the exact chipset will be more difficult, and will probably require dismantling the enclosure.

Maybe a shot in the dark, but who knows?

I'm not in denial of the issue.  The intent of my post was to provide information concerning systems that have not suffered these issues.  More information is good.  Perhaps it could lead to discovering a stop-gap fix for those who would suffer later. 

I don't do Mac support, but I am very technical and work in the industry. 

hexdiy 

USB to Sata controller....There is a distinct 2nd possibility though

Yes, I mentioned that option in the other thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5475136?start=0&tstart=0

Thats what Ive been working on for 3 days, I have piles of HD, and been testing 9 different SATA bridge cards on 2 diff. 2.5" drives.

no change in status, all fine, so far.

Have a few of them pictured here:

Your dead external hard drive is likely fine! Great hope for your 'faulty' external HD

Typical SATA bridge cards as seen inside a 3.5" external HD with power input (#1), and 2.5" SATA cards (#3, #4, #5)

Drives being emptied and renamed to "MyBook" in the absence of WD software is strange.

This is from a WD staff member in the WD forum (http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/External-Drives-for-Mac-Exper iencing-Data-Loss-with-Maverick-OS/td-p/613775/page/3):

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.)

------------------------

I also put together the following list of places where I found WD software through my communication with Apple, WD and forums. There are a couple more places in it which are not mentioned above.

/Library/Application Support

/Library/LaunchAgents

/Library/LaunchDaemons

/Library/Preferences

/System/Library/Extensions

/Library/StartupItems

Accept my apologies, I wasn't intending to imply that.

It was merely that you looked like you were continuing to risk the drives on a Mavericks system, your info is helpful too.

In case the link to the WD forum does not work: http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/External-Drives-for-Mac-Exper iencing-Data-Loss-with-Maverick-OS/td-p/613775/page/3

+1, Drew! Better safe than sorry...

I think 'don't connect these disks to Mavericks' is the only sensible recommendation at this stage.

BTW, has it occurred to anyone in this thread that there are no reports of newly bought, bare and unformatted drives being affected after mounting them in an external housing, and formatting/ partitioning via Disk Utility?

Just the procedure you would follow when putting a new, unformatted HDD into our Mac, only this time into an external enclosure instead.

As said, no Smartware, and there are no WD compontents on this Mavericks Mac’s system drive.

As this hit me one week after installing Mavericks, my suggestion is not to connect external drives via USB/Thunderbolt/FireWire, even though they seem to work just fine at first. They did here, too. For a week. Now, not so.

nggalai  The WD MyBook “Media”, backup drives had all sorts of names.

connected my Time Machine HDD. It NOW shows up as “MyBook” in both the finder and Disc Utility. What?

And yes, a WD MyBook was daisy-chained to the Time Machine drive previously.

The drives I tested were all non-RAID, run-off-the-mill USB drives by Toshiba and Hitachi.

Since your posts had fragmented information here and there,.. I didnt see it until now.

The collective totality of your posts important information...    (if it is actually true that you got all WD software off, but honestly,...new locations still are manifesting where its being found at)      ...points to possible WD MyBook firmware corrupting other drives WHILE your Mac is connected to the WD MyBooks, but also ..(? you didnt indicate if the Toshiba + Hitachi were connected at the SAME TIME the MyBooks were connected)

1. Mybook firmware cross 'contamination'

2. SATA hardware backwards corrupting other HD while connected at same time as MyBooks

3. remaining WD software still yet to be found (despite you being convinced its all removed)

4. hidden SATA drivers from WD MyBook populating to your "plain USB formatted" Toshiba and Hitachi while NOT connected at same time as MyBooks

hexdiy 

BTW, has it occurred to anyone in this thread that there are no reports of newly bought, bare and unformatted drives being affected after mounting them in an external housing, and formatting/ partitioning via Disk Utility?

There are reports of same,.. Ive tried to duplicate it with many drives with no "luck" in doing so.

Thanks for your great effort here, PlotinusVeritas, as well as for the exquisite tech link. And offtopic: for dataretrieval purposes I sometimes not only switch to a different enclosure/ Sata bridge, but swap identical HDD controller boards as well ( this only works if the HDDs are really identical, firmware and all, like in the old Lacie Big Disks). And I am certainly aware that by doing so, the bad block log of the original mechanical unit is lost.

Anyhow, I sincerely hope somebody will get to the bottom of the issue at hand here...

hexdiy 

different enclosure/ Sata bridge, but swap identical HDD controller boards

Yes, in repairing bad HD control boards, if you have stacks of the same HD,.. easy enough to do and done so a few times.

Swapping SATA bridge cards is easy enough, but upon any data corruption, most anyone here doesnt know how to swap HD controller boards NOR has the spare identical HD to cannibalize them in "testing".

Nor do most want or dare removed a HD from its enclosure which is often sealed plastic clamshell you have to break and crack to get open.