Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

I ran the deep scan in Data Rescue 3 (took like 30+ hours) and with no luck of having my original file names or structure back.

Some people really believe that simple uninstalling of WD Drive Manager and Smartware will immediately return their data back. Unfortunately, that's no true. Since RAID configuration has changed and involved drive actually reformatted, it won't come back to previous state by itself. So, data restoration process should be the next step after WD utilities are wiped - e.g. using recovery software provided by WD.

I was told by Apple tech that the drive may not have been formatted but instead the data is somehow hidden. That kind of makes sense to me. I'm not expecting the data to be 'magically' revealed, but that is what has happened for some people. Obviously in some instances this is more complicated than it first appears. I was told by Apple not to begin data recovery just yet as they are looking into the issue based on the premise that the drive has not been formatted, but that the data is hidden i.e. the drive is displaying as blank when it is in fact not. Of course, I'm not putting my entire faith in this and the data recovery software I have (various programs) is at the ready, but if there is a simpler, less time consuming option than data recovery, I'm willing to give Apple's engineers and few days ot try and figure it out...

I don't know the details of the OSX directory structure, but I wonder if it uses something like the "sticky bit" used in Unix, for user disk permissions. It could be that if the bit was changed by the WD software, you could see into a disk, or folder, and yet can't see any files.

:shrug:

I must be one of the early victims to be hit with this disaster. I am still waiting to hear official word from WD and Apple since October 23 if there is any hope of restoring the original volume. Computer people I talked to says there is not, but I'm still crossing my fingers and trying to keep my cool which is very difficult.

During this time I tested EasyRecovery, Disk Drill and Data Rescue 3 and none could recover original file names and directory structure.

Try changing the flag to unhide files,

In terminal run this line:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -boolean true

Also,

This terminal command resets the permission buts for the user to have Read,Write, eXecute access to the files and folders.

chmod -Rf 777 (insert files/folders here)

I had this problem and ended up fixing it. It's not glamorous, but it worked.

I am a photographer, and keep all of my currently open projects on a G-Drive Mini (1TB, FW 800 USB 3). After updating my main MacBook (MBPr, late-2013, 13", 2.8) to Mavericks, I could see the names of the Aperture Libraries on the drive, but could not access them. I corroborated their existence with the amount of data available on the drive, as seen in the finder window. Screen shot here: www.bephotographs.com/screenshot

After reading about the issue, I came to the conclusion everyone else did here; that it was the drive-maker's software that was causing the issue. This made sense since other externals - that I know I had reformatted in the past - worked fine.

Luckily, I had one MacBook with Mountain Lion on it. I plugged in the drive, plugged in another 1TB drive (Seagate Back-Up Plus, 1TB, USB 3), and transferred all 850GB to it. I then reformatted the G-Drive, put the data back on, and plugged it into my Mavericks MBP. ALL THE LIBRARIES WERE THERE!

Like I said, not glamorous, took forever, but at the end of the day, everything is fine. I lost a couple days of productivity due to this whole fiasco, but I suppose the lesson to be learned here is to jsut reformat an external before using it for the first time. Unless you actually want the pre-installed software that comes along with it.

Hope this helps.

Brandon

Brandon318 wrote:

After reading about the issue, I came to the conclusion everyone else did here; that it was the drive-maker's software that was causing the issue. This made sense since other externals - that I know I had reformatted in the past - worked fine.

I suppose the lesson to be learned here is to jsut reformat an external before using it for the first time. Unless you actually want the pre-installed software that comes along with it.

Brandon

The issue is not about formatting a new drive or not. The problem is the completely unnecessary that WD supplies with their USB drives. It is that driver software that is the source of this problem. However, I agree with you that formatting a brand new drive before putting it in service is an excellent idea. In fact, it's better to delete the existing partition and create a new one and then format it. Many USB drives come with a Windows partition and need to be repartitioned and formatted to the proper Mac format anyway.

As blindeyetom said, it really is amazing that this wasn't caught in beta testing. You'd think someone out there was using those drivers. You'd also think WD would be testing pre-release versions of MacOS. So it's pretty amazing this was missed.

I still think the main lesson is skip these sorts of updates on important production machines until it's been out there for a while, to see what the verdict is, and preferably wait until the second iteration of the release. In fact, on important production machines,, I recommend that you don't update it at all (including other software, like iTunes, etc.) without doing some research before hand.

I have two drives connected to my iMac.
1.) FreeAgent Desk Seagate Drive 1TB was connected through FireWire. (the affected drive)
2.) WD MyBook Drive 3TB was connected through USB. (not affected)

I know i reformatted the WD MyBook soon as i got it.... but i dont know about the Seagate.

Only the Seagate was affected. I never use the Manufacturers Drive software for any drives. My files are still there but will not open. Only some files were affected, seems like 70% of the files on the Seagate were affected. All of the files affected have the Same Modified date of November 8th between 11:50pm and 1:40pm.

I installed Mavericks two weeks ago. and no files were affected at time of upgrade. I have no idea exactly when the problem happened but i would assume Nov 8th. around 12pm.

Currently using my wifes laptop running Snow Leopard to backup the Seagate Drive to my WD drive as @Brandon318 suggested.

.....5 hours left to backup. I will report when done.

Just a word of caution to ALL Mavericks users who think the wiping of external drivers ONLY pertains to WD drives. Mavericks just wiped one of my external Segate GoFlex drives. Prior to that my five external Seagate drives had been randomly appearing and disappearing from the desktop after installing Mavericks. But the forums all seem to focus on WD. Live and learn.

jeffsphoto21 wrote:

Just a word of caution to ALL Mavericks users who think the wiping of external drivers ONLY pertains to WD drives. Mavericks just wiped one of my external Segate GoFlex drives. Prior to that my five external Seagate drives had been randomly appearing and disappearing from the desktop after installing Mavericks. But the forums all seem to focus on WD. Live and learn.

Good point. The Seagates randomly appearing and disappearing sounds like a firmware problem. I seem to recall we saw this a few years back.

I wonder what Apple changed in Mavericks that caught these companies by surprise. Heck, even 10.8.5 introduced some weird drive problems that have not been completely resolved.

quote:

just a word of caution to ALL Mavericks users who think the wiping of external drivers ONLY pertains to WD drives. Mavericks just wiped one of my external Segate GoFlex drives. Prior to that my five external Seagate drives had been randomly appearing and disappearing from the desktop after installing Mavericks. But the forums all seem to focus on WD. Live and learn.

I encountered the same issue when updating Macericks.
It's not any external drivers!

How Apple is gonna react and reimburse?
Those datas are priceless!
I'm outrageous now...!

Elliott Yang

who think the wiping of external drivers ONLY pertains to WD drives

This has nothing to do with mechanical drives mfg. by WD, nor the controller boards ON the HD.

A hard drive is a lifeless brick, all of them, variances to the data corruption issue here are central to:

A: Mavericks OS (causation still unknown in relation to B or otherwise).

B: software (WD software, known causation as WD has admitted to already).

Run this uninstaller and see if you have any WD software on your system:

Western Digital Software Unintaller released 11-4-2013

For Mac

WD Software Uninstaller

File Name: WD_Software_Uninstaller_1_0_0_8.zip

Peace 😊

To add to the discussion:

In my case (Seagate drives) I hooked up the drives to a brand new out of the box iMac. The drives had been previously formatted with Apple's Disk Utility while connected via USB 2.0 to my old PowerBook Pro running Mountain Lion. I did NOT migrate any data from the old MacBook. Everything was a fresh install that did NOT include any Seagate softyware. The drive problems appeared after installing Mavericks.

Elliott Yang wrote:

How Apple is gonna react and reimburse?
Those datas are priceless!
I'm outrageous now...!

It's your responsibility. Lost data is your fault.