Trocafish

Q: Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

My WD MyBook studio 2TB (fw800) suddenly shows up empty on my desktop after a Mavericks upfrade on my mid 2009 mbp.

 

Disk Drill is now scanning the WD, and the files are there, about 1,4 TB of it...

 

How do I get the disc structure back?

 

I have no Mountain Lion OS-mac to test the WD in..

 

I had a bootable Mountain Lion on the WD, could that be the problem?

 

In Disk Drill MyBook has four units; EFI(200Mb), MyBook(1,8Tb), Unallocated 128Mb and Lost partition (200Mb)

iOS 7, Ipad mini + ios7

Posted on Oct 24, 2013 1:08 AM

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Q: Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

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  • by GetRealBro,

    GetRealBro GetRealBro Dec 2, 2013 8:54 AM in response to Tom in London
    Level 1 (21 points)
    Dec 2, 2013 8:54 AM in response to Tom in London

    Tom in London wrote:

     

    Thanks for all the warnings, folks!  I haven't installed Mavericks yet, but was thinking of maybe doing so during the quiet Christmas week, to try it out - having first cloned my existing OS (Mountain Lion) to an external drive (not Western Digital), on which to fall back should I not like Mavericks.

     

    Now I'm not so sure.

    I never update the OS on my internal drive until I'm sure that I'm happy with a new OS.

     

    Once you have a clone (on a bootable external drive) you could just update the OS on the external drive. Test it out, etc. by booting from the external (just unmount your internal to keep from getting confused). Note: No one in this thread has reported problems with an internal drive being "damaged" by Mavericks.

     

    When you're happy with Mavericks you can clone it back onto your internal using Disk Utility (i.e. Restore). If you're not happy, go back to booting from your internal drive.

     

    --GetRealBro

  • by Tom in London,

    Tom in London Tom in London Dec 2, 2013 8:56 AM in response to GetRealBro
    Level 4 (1,626 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 2, 2013 8:56 AM in response to GetRealBro

    ah, but my external drive is slow.

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Dec 2, 2013 9:00 AM in response to Tom in London
    Level 5 (7,746 points)
    Notebooks
    Dec 2, 2013 9:00 AM in response to Tom in London

    Tom in London wrote:

     

    Now I'm not so sure.

     

    If I install Mavericks but don't like it, I was thinking I could just plug in my external drive with the Mountain Lion clone, boot from it, and then clone Mountain Lion back to my internal drive.

     

    But if many of the posts here are to be believed, there's a risk that my external drive will be wiped as soon as I plug it in.

     

    So I'm going to have to be very careful - and I'll be making two clones of Mountain Lion, to two external drives.

     

    I don't like the sound of this at all.....

     

    Make a bootable 10.8 USB.

    http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/08/make-a-bootable-mac-os-x-10-7-lion-installer-from -a-usb-flash-drive/ or http://liondiskmaker.com/

     

    Reboot to the 10.8 installer, connect the external 10.8 USB disk, use Disk Utility to erase & restore to the internal disk. It should avoid running any 10.9 code.

     

    Many backups are a great idea though

    Use different tools like Disk Utility, Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper!

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R Dec 2, 2013 5:04 PM in response to Tom in London
    Level 6 (17,700 points)
    Dec 2, 2013 5:04 PM in response to Tom in London

    Tom in London wrote:

    ah, but my external drive is slow.

    If your internal drive has room for it, you could split it into two partitions, clone the current system to it, & then upgrade one or the other partition to Mavericks.

     

    To prevent them from interacting, you can add an "fstab" file to each system's /etc/ folder that prevents the other system's partition from mounting at boot time. (If you are interested in doing this & can't find the info elsewhere, leave a reply & I'll try to help you do that.)

     

    This is what I have done with both my own & my wife's "everyday" Macs. We have both decided to stay with Mavericks, so (because I was careful to leave the second partition running Mountain Lion) all that remains to do is erase that second partition & expand the first one so we have all its capacity available for Mavericks.

  • by DFAM,

    DFAM DFAM Dec 2, 2013 11:52 PM in response to Trocafish
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 2, 2013 11:52 PM in response to Trocafish

    I have a Mac Mini with an Iomega 2Tb and a Lacie 3Tb drive. After upgrading to Mavrivk My Lacie drive locks up and loses all data, after trying to do a backup via Time machine. After Shutting down and restarting or switching the drive off and on again my data returns. Thought it was Lacie drive failure. Exchange drive. Still same problem. Change cable and USB port. Waiting for next failure.

  • by --Narah--,

    --Narah-- --Narah-- Dec 3, 2013 3:48 AM in response to Trocafish
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 3, 2013 3:48 AM in response to Trocafish

    Hi all,

     

    I've been following this tread with attention.

     

    I didn't have any data loss on my external disks on Mavericks. But I did find that I/O access on Mavericks can be very slow sometimes. Specially with spotify which is much slower than what it was on Lion (I skipped ML). In trying to find more feedback about this behaviour, I found this topic, which I've been following since a couple of weeks.

     

    This I/O "slowness" was a surprise for me, because I have a late 2011 15" Macbook pro, which is a very nice machine. So it shouldn't behave like this.

     

    Regarding my external disks, I have 2x1TB iomega external disks, that are partitioned with 2x500GB partitions each. Until now I didn't have any trouble with them (I'm on Mavericks almost a month now). They are connected via USB.

     

    I also have an old lacie drive with 320GB, which I didn't connect to maverick yet. Because it has my Lion backup in case I need to reverse to it. It has FW and USB.

     

    For what I've seen, it appears that the way Mavericks handles I/O has changed, a lot. And I think that if a disk as 1TB or more of data available to the system, problems can occur, especially if they are WD and seagate according to this thread feedback.

     

    A test that can be done on the bigger disks that had problems, is to partition them with sizes of 1TB or less and use USB instead of FW. Maybe it can help and avoid problems, until this all thing is fixed.

     

    Hope it can help somebody.

  • by Tom in London,

    Tom in London Tom in London Dec 3, 2013 3:58 AM in response to R C-R
    Level 4 (1,626 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 3, 2013 3:58 AM in response to R C-R

    R C-R wrote:

     

    If your internal drive has room for it, you could split it into two partitions, clone the current system to it, & then upgrade one or the other partition to Mavericks.

     

     

     

    Yes, I did that when Mountain Lion came out (I kept Snow Leopard on a separate partition until I was happy with ML, at which point I reformatted the drive for ML only).

     

    I'll consider doing the same thing for Mavericks - as you suggest.

     

    Just one question: how can 2 completely separate partitions "interact" ? Why would I need to prevent that from happening?

  • by Chastings,

    Chastings Chastings Dec 3, 2013 6:12 PM in response to Trocafish
    Level 1 (57 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 3, 2013 6:12 PM in response to Trocafish

    All,

     

    Has anyone had Apple acknowledge the non-WD issue with external drives?

     

    I see 10.9.1 betas released without any mention of this problem. 

     

    I also see more and more one star ratings with the reason being wiped drives (along with other reasons).

     

    I found it a little odd that the day Mavericks was released it had 9000+ Five star ratings. Since then the one star ratings have outpaced the other ratings (from my casual observation).

     

    Losing faith quickly!

     

    Curt

  • by mikkibarry,

    mikkibarry mikkibarry Dec 3, 2013 6:29 PM in response to Chastings
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 3, 2013 6:29 PM in response to Chastings

    I've been working on these problems for 5 days straight.  One Seagate drive I copied from left greyed out folders with dates of 1/24/84 on the directories.  The files inside the directory were correct.  Then I got OS notifications that the Seagate was having data integrity issues.  Disk Utility said it couldn't repair a "live" disk even though no data was being accessed on it.  Disk Warrior couldn't repair it due to "hardware problems."  Drive Genius 3 didn't even see it.  I rebooted and Disk Utility testing the upper of the two listings of the drive said it was ok.  It finished way too quickly, however, so I tried the lower listing and it was unable to repair and failed.

     

    I may have rescued most f the data (I hope) but now it seems that I have two brand new but non trustworthy Seagate 4 gig drives. 

  • by Chastings,

    Chastings Chastings Dec 3, 2013 7:54 PM in response to Trocafish
    Level 1 (57 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 3, 2013 7:54 PM in response to Trocafish

    All,

     

    Another question...has anyone had Mavericks corrupt an INTERNAL drive when running Mavericks on an EXTERNAL drive.

     

    Thanks,

    Curt

  • by R C-R,

    R C-R R C-R Dec 3, 2013 8:09 PM in response to Tom in London
    Level 6 (17,700 points)
    Dec 3, 2013 8:09 PM in response to Tom in London

    Tom in London wrote:

    Just one question: how can 2 completely separate partitions "interact" ? Why would I need to prevent that from happening?

    Generally, they remain separate but there are a few things that might under some circumstances (for example) access a database or index file of an app on the wrong partition. (If you use Mail or iPhoto you may remember messages about updating their housekeeping files before you could use the newer version bundled with the newer OS.)

     

    The chances of something like that happening are low, but I prefer to take no chances & mount only one or the other partition at a time.

  • by jeffsphoto21,

    jeffsphoto21 jeffsphoto21 Dec 3, 2013 8:48 PM in response to Chastings
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 3, 2013 8:48 PM in response to Chastings

    Had my Seagate external 4TB wiped by Mavericks. Just got off the phone for about the third or fourth time with Apple. They said the engineers are aware that some people are having problems with WD drives - based on these boards. They said that they don't see what the problem is. This whole business of wiped external drives when using Mavericks has truly shaken my long time faith in Apple. They have utterly dropped the ball on this. I find it hard to believe they are so oblivious - or incompetent?

  • by mikkibarry,

    mikkibarry mikkibarry Dec 3, 2013 8:54 PM in response to jeffsphoto21
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 3, 2013 8:54 PM in response to jeffsphoto21

    Wait a sec. Did they actually say they don't see what the problem is?  It's NOT just WD drives.  It's also Promise Pegasus and Seagate.  Are they not listening? 

  • by jeffsphoto21,

    jeffsphoto21 jeffsphoto21 Dec 3, 2013 8:57 PM in response to mikkibarry
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 3, 2013 8:57 PM in response to mikkibarry

    Nope. They are not listening. If you read these boards you'll see that it certainly is NOT just WD drives. They completely disavowed any knowledge or responsibility for what's been happening. They not only claim to not see what the problem is but they refuse to even say there is a problem.

  • by petermac87,

    petermac87 petermac87 Dec 3, 2013 9:07 PM in response to jeffsphoto21
    Level 5 (7,402 points)
    Dec 3, 2013 9:07 PM in response to jeffsphoto21

    That seems odd. They told me the opposite when I spoke to them.

     

    Pete

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