Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

Uhm ... I've shutdown my iMac, start it again and the "WD Drive Manager" disapears ... ?

No WD Data in Library\Application Support\, nothing left on the hole HDD from WD? Okay, now I have no work with it to uninstall, but I can't understand why all software and all plists etc. suddenly disapears ...

I wonder if Apple is using their Malware removal tool to target the WD Drive Manager and pull it from all Macs. That would be the fastest, most effective method to curtail the problems.

Nothing in XProtect at this time.

May have been added to the incompatibility list in the latest Mavericks installer.

They wouldn't, they have no right to do that. That is unfortunate, because I can only imagine how many more people will lose their data cause they don't know about this issue.

It was added to my upgrade five days ago. WD software was found in the "incompatible software" folder. Mac Mini 2.53GZ with two 2TB WD My Book Studio II drives raid 1 formatted and and one 4TB WD My Book Studio II raid 0 formatted using the WD software about a year ago. All connected with FW800.

Not knowing there was a problem I tried to reinstall the WD software. The WD icon showed up for a few seconds in the top menu bar then dissappeared. All drives are functioning normally.

there is no checking. My system doesn't boot anymore at all. The harddrive became corrupted. I cannot even format anymore. Only my bootcamp partition is working. So I'm typing this right now from my Windows installation.

But it's not really strange. There are countless people here reporting about data loss/corrupted HD on internal harddrives, especially WD harddrives.

I contacted Promise, and receieved a one-line response saying that they had no idea what thee problem could be.

I have tried everything, and as I've explained before, I have a new'ish iMac loaded, with 2 27" Thunderbolt Apple displays added, and a Promise Pegasus R4 (no other Thunderbolt devices). The R4 DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH MAVERICK. IT DOES NOT FUNCTION PROPERLY WITH TIME MACHINE. IT CRASHES AND REQUIRES A FORCED EJECT. ALL THE FILES ARE BROKEN, IT WILL NOT RESUME A TIME MACHINE BACKUP.

Yes, some also complain that WD and other HD's are also dying with Maverick, but I have installed a 3TB USB WD Ext HDD 1021 and it has performed Time Machine backups (inclusding incrementals) OK.

It is not just the iMac, the Time Machine, or perhaps the R4, but the R4 does not work with this iMac and Maverick, yet it was fine with Mountian Lion... it only died under Maverick. It will format, but it will not function Maverick with Time Machine.

Soooo... PROMISE... you have obviously NOT tested it thoroughly with Maverick, and lying about that online when your support people admit otherwise isn't helping your preputation. I have been through at least 4 other threads here on this issue, and they all complain aboutPromise Pegasus being dysfuntional with Maverick.

PS... the R4 uses a GUID partition, and the WD USB uses Master Boot record... perhaps Maverick is having an issue with GUID ???

My data is gone as well, WD my book worked for a while with maverick and now everything is gone, very important data lost. nice, thanks APPLE or WD.

Please take this with a grain of salt, I ran into this discussion while I was grappling with getting a Silicon Graphics chipped SATA raid to start working again...

My take on this Western Digital issue is that the people who have used WD's drivers are the ones who get what looks like 'blanked' disks. I believe that the issue belong's to WD. Their drivers are most likely 32bit. Why do I think this? The reason is because of how I got my SG RAID drive to 'come back.' I found the correct 64bit software and as soon as I load the 64 bit version, in a blink of an eye, my RAID was back.

Also, I want to echo those who have said to not use the manufacturer's drivers, be it internal or external drives. Of course, this case is external drives, so if you buy a new external drive, format that sucker with Apple's Disk Utility, that make it "OS-upgrade-proof" because Apple has to keep up with it's own upgrades. If you plug in a driver to your Mac and it doesn't show up, then launch Disk Utility and see if it is there, if it is, format it, if not, unplug it and take it back and get a different brand.

So, why did I have my problem? It's because OS X was not seeing my SATA card correctly. When I first got it working, there was only a 32 bit version. I also did not use the RAID software from SG and used Apple's RAID that is built in with Disk Utility.

I posted a link earlier in the discussion to a problem I was having with a G-Tech drive.

An hour ago I got an error saying i hadn't put my drives away properly but when I went to the Finder I was unable to locate my G-Tech drive and I no longer had permission to see my LaCie disc's contents.

I freaked.... I then called Applecare. We reset the PRAM and everything came back. I'm now furiously backing up.

QUESTION RE RECOMMENDATION TO UNINSTALL WD DRIVE MANAGER:

According to the My Book Studio II user manual the "WD Drive Manager enables Safe ShutdownTM" making sure that the drive can't be switched off during write operations. For example during or after a Time Machine backup you can hear the drive writing or defragmenting files. Switching the drive off in the middle of a write operation would result in damaged files. Now that WD recommends to uninstall WD Drive Manager - wouldn't that be dangerous? How should I know when is the correct = safe moment to switch off my drive?

Many thanks.

More update...

I put a 3TB WD USB drive on, with a Master Boot Record partition, and Time Machine fianally worked, and has kept working (I even remove it in Time Machine, and add it back after F'ing with this %$#@!!! R4 and it works like a charm). I thought perhaps that the GUID partition (default for the Promise Pegasus R4) may be what causes the problem with Maverick, but alas, after forcing a single Apple partition, the R4 looked like it would work, but it failed after 2/3 of a backup - didn't even finish and tossed Time Machine into 'Stopping...' No doubt I'll eventually have to 'Force Eject' it and reformat it yet again. I'll wait 24 hours again though as some have reported that if they ignore the error messages, sometimes it just starts working for no apparent reason.

So, whatever issue Maverick has with iMac and Promise Pegasus R4 trying to use Time Machine, I'm at a loss.

This is something that Apple and Promise (and others) need to stop pointing fingers at each other about. Others are reporting fails on LaCie, and WD and now G-tech as well. There is OBVIOUSLY a serious problem with Maverick.

So, Apple and HD companies out there, please WTFU and start programming some solutions! Waiting for 10.9.1

Bosto,

You can rest assured Promise Pegasus is fully compatible with Mavericks but also not doubting you have hit some corner case. I have personally tested various scenarios with Pegasus using Time Machine with 10.8 to Mavericks and all pass with flying colors (this is part of the vast number of test cases covered). If you are still interested in pursuing the root cause and solution to this problem please email me the case ID you filed with our support. I tried looking you up under your forum profile but no luck.

victor.p@promise.com Victor Pacheco

Pegasus2_Promise You can rest assured Promise Pegasus is fully compatible with Mavericks

You are erroneously discounting model and build year.

Chain of causation is yet indeterminate outside of Mavericks as central whether or not:

1. the effect of corruption is passing straight to peripheral hard drives

2. or as to the effect of corruption is being necessitated thru a specific model and build year, before corrupting the peripheral hard drives

http://www.zdnet.com/mavericks-issues-reported-with-thunderbolt-storage-esata-ca rds-7000022732/

FirmTek reports specific build issue with the 2010 Macbook Pro 17" for example with Mavericks

There are statistically relevant postings concerning 'older' macbook Pro 2012/2011/2010 in searches and the Imac even more so.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3181015?start=330&tstart=0

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

Pegasus2_Promise You can rest assured Promise Pegasus is fully compatible with Mavericks

You are erroneously discounting model and build year.

Chain of causation is yet indeterminate outside of Mavericks as central whether or not:

1. the effect of corruption is passing straight to peripheral hard drives

2. or as to the effect of corruption is being necessitated thru a specific model and build year, before corrupting the peripheral hard drives

FirmTek reports specific build issue with the 2010 Macbook Pro 17" for example

There are statistically relevant postings concerning 'older' macbook Pro 2012/2011/2010 in searches and the Imac even more so.

Link?