Q: Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

You only have 400gig of external data

archive it online and on another HD.  1TB is only $70.  Hard drives are cheap as dirt

Mavericks occurrence or not 2 copies of all vital data minimum is 'mandatory' other than any data ON the computer.

those who fail to have redundant data archives always end up regretting it.  In this precautionary measure you are protected and no worries to upgrade to Mavericks as you so choose.

always have unattached 'frozen' data redundancies.

Looks like I'll be picking up another HD, then!

I'll probably have to downgrade back to Snow Leopard before connecting these drives to the computer again, though... Just as a precaution.

I have a question regarding the drives themselves - if I connect both the original and new HD to the laptop, then copy/paste the time machine backup files from the old HD to the new one, will that work? Or do I have to move one of the time machine backups from the old HD onto the laptop, and back said files up onto the new HD using time machine?

(Sorry if that's confusing!)

Not an ideal idea at all, if you want a clone, use SuperDuper and clone the TM backup.

SuperDuper is free, it clones one drive to another

Cloning the 1st HD (your original) is best option if you want a redundant copy of a TM backup.

Ideally TM is a system backup, and NOT a data archive.    This is why time machine is a "bad" premise for data archives, its buried inside time machine, and quick data extraction is "less than fast".

No, dont worry about moving files from TM to computer or otherwise. You just want a redundant copy.

In the future consider making DATA only (things you made, / saved / created/ etc.) in files on an autonomous HD and leave Time machining for backing up the computer and its resident files.

While time machine is a backup, people make a hyperbolic 'error' out of this thinking that "time machine is therefore a backup/archive of my valuable data etc."   its "not", and "not safe" on time machine.

see here for idealized use of time machine:

Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection

Time machine is also a "revolving door" and when out of space erases older files.

Worst still you have no genuine verification that your vital data is ON time machine UNTIL you need it in an emergency, and thats a BAD working premise.

Its like throwing emergency supplies in a dark basement and never knowing if its all still "down there" until you need it. 

It could be corrupted, and in the case of "when full old files are erased" time machine is like having a window open on "the basement" and important stuff is spilling out the window into oblivion.

Thank you for the insight; it's very helpful. I've tended to simply 'drag and drop' files from one computer to an external drive before using Time Machine, so perhaps it's best to use that method as well?

time machine contains the ENTIRE OS with its 10s of 1000s of files, a "drag and drop" will likely FAIL

far too many endless 1000s of files, if it worked at ALL it would take 'forever', in which case make a SuperDuper clone.

The program is extremely easy, FREE, well liked and widely used by most ALL Mac users, .......its 2 clicks and sit back and let it CLONE HD A to HD B (exact clone/copy)

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

Also consider reading up on what Time Machine is and how to use it "best" and what it is idealized for by the certified "guru" of Time Machine

http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

It killed my Time Capsule.

I keep losing all the data on my 8TB G-RAID Thunderbolt drive.  Whenever the machine goes to sleep, I get the dreaded "improper disconnection" warning when I wake it up and then a message saying the disk is corrupted and I should back up immediately.

I have nothing Western Digital on my comptuer and never have.  This is definitely an issue with the OS.

Thanks for your advice, its true that I´m not in a rush really. The fact that I´ve been hanging on to Snow Leopard can testify to that. I have deliberately sitting out both Lion och Mountain Lion because it didn´t seem worth it. Its just that I was looking forward to getting some more speed in my old machine since I´ve been reading about higher performance with Mavericks.

I´ll take your advice and make more backups before eventually updating in the future.

Thanks

No. A bit more reading and research might enlighten you.

Cheers

Pete

Use Data Rescue 3.

Regarding Your 2nd question, below is my private opinion:

Because of this WD screw-up I'd suggest as a mac user there is no need for us to support WD any longer. I will change all my drives to Seagate. Why would I stick with WD when they don't test their software nor hardware on new OS X betas?

Dear Anton,

I wrote to my local WD support and I got at first loosy answers. I wrote a second time and my questions, I have been told, have been passed over to the second level. In the meanwhile I am here with a unmounted 500GB WD external disk drive which I used to save all my photos, music and backup files.

Is anyhow thinkable for you to share the key of Easy Recovery 11 Professional with me if it works?

Thanks.

This is NOT a problem to a specific drive mfg. It's a Mavericks problem with external drives. Check these forums out and you'll see. My Seagate went south. Others have even reported crashes on their Apple Time Capsules. Why Apple is not warning people off this and still allowing the release of Mavericks is anybody's guess.

Because nobody sue apple. I hope someone will do.

I probably have over 35 WD drives from 8TB Thunderbolt to 160GB passports that date back a number of years. They are a mixture of FW, USB 2 and USB 3 and Thunderbolt.  I have backups and archive copies.

Question: If I run the WD uninstall program and 'remove' their software, am I safe to install Maverick?  Do I need to do anything with each drive or can I just uninstall on my operating system?  Three separate computers.

I've a 500GB Samsung ext HD and just started noticing problems in the last 24 hours with my 13" 2013 Air. I plug it in and my files in the ext HD appear to be either missing or have these 'blank' thumbnails. I try to eject and I get a message saying it's used by another program (which I eventually found out is Spotlight), nothing works unless I restart.

After restart, I configure spotlight to ignore my external disk and I can unmount normally. However, the same problem persists when I try to plug my ext HD again.

Strange thing though is that I wasn't facing this problem a couple of weeks ago and I was already running Mavericks.

N.B. My ext is NTFS-formatted, I've NTFS-3G and MacFuse installed.