Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

jeffsphoto21 wrote:

From the gist of all the talk here, it seems to be apparent that's it's not about the hard drives. It's Mavericks. And what's frustrating, evidentally to most people, is that Apple is still acting oblivious to the whole situation and still putting yet more people at risk by blithely going ahead with a defective release. And sure you can archive and backup to the kazoo but Apple's customers seemingly were lulled into thinking that buy a Mac and "It Just Works." I guess the new motto should be "It Just Works–kinda, sort of, sometimes, maybe not...". Just like with Maps - they should at least slap a Beta designation on their new stuff.

If that were true, then every user of Mavericks would be complaining. This is a Troubleshootin forum so you will only see the issue raised by the tiny percentage of the many millions of Mavericks users coming here to post their issues. You really should back up your claims with links to what you claim as facts. These forums or not representative of the mass. WD, for example have already issued statements of apology and admitted to being at fault.

Pete

jeffsphoto21 wrote:

From the gist of all the talk here, it seems to be apparent that's it's not about the hard drives. It's Mavericks.

Are we reading the same posts? Because it appears that the case is exactly the opposite of your assertion.

It is possible that there is an issue with Mavericks, but from what I'm reading, all the evidence points to WD and Seagate at this point.

:scratch head:

jeffsphoto21

is that Apple is still acting oblivious

Silence isn't a sign of being oblivious, rather plotting a "best" or perfect solution.

As sure as you were writing that there are teams of software and firmware experts pouring over and over things for a solution.

Far worse than silence from any company is a company that has come out making a half-solution or statement that turns out to be wholly or partially incorrect by operating on or from "less than all the facts".

Ive worked for a large international company that had a similar occurrence a couple times,....customers accused them of sitting in silence for a few weeks "oblivious", when in fact the company was burning the midnight away day and night to make a "best" or "perfect" solution / fix / answer etc.

If the finest minds on earth can build a $300,000,000 satellite with a software flaw (as has been done a few times) , ...I dont expect any better from Apple on an occurrence here or there.

jeffsphoto21

it's not about the hard drives. It's Mavericks.

Correct, said that from the beginning, however most indications are that its Mavericks AND WD software 'contamination in conjunction with Mavericks',.... and further indication of Mavericks incapacity to deal with non-WD drives that are 2+ TB in size.

RogerOut

but from what I'm reading, all the evidence points to WD and Seagate at this point.

NO, there is NO EVIDENCE of issues from WD mechanical drives, not ONE, ...you're confusing WD drives with WD control software (specifically especially WD RAID setups thru same WD software).

All evidence currently (barring further investigation) points to:

A: WD control software (w/ Mavericks)

B: WD software cross-contamination in conjunction with Mavericks

C: Mavericks incapacity to deal with non-WD drives in excess of 2+ terabytes.

D: (and a minor sleep issue with external drives thru thunderbolt and firewire)

When they recall a car model for a defect it's not because every single purchaser of that model has the same complaint. It's because the defect was of such a generic nature that the likelyhood of the defect causing a problem in the future was too great to ignore, even in small numbers. Look, I've been a happy Apple camper for years - going back to my original Centris 650. But this particular issue just seems particularly egregious. I'll trust Apple to resolve it - hopefully sooner than later.

jeffsphoto21 wrote:

When they recall a car model for a defect it's not because every single purchaser of that model has the same complaint. It's because the defect was of such a generic nature that the likelyhood of the defect causing a problem in the future was too great to ignore, even in small numbers. Look, I've been a happy Apple camper for years - going back to my original Centris 650. But this particular issue just seems particularly egregious. I'll trust Apple to resolve it - hopefully sooner than later.

Western Digital have removed all links to their software downloads and admitted being at fault. As I have said, we are not all seeing problems. My two WD drives are functioning as always. You are quick to isolate the problem to Apple alone. Why is that?

Pete

Here's my disk setup and backup and archive routine.

Late 2012 Mac Mini with a 256GB SSD, LaCie Thunderbolt to eSata Hub.

One WD USB3 2TB drive with two partitions, one of which is a 500GB partition dedicated to Time Machine. The other partition is a scratch disk where I push data as another backup/temp holding and that can be fluid and ad hoc. For example, if I rip a DVD, along with dropping it on the production drive, I'll also copy it to a holding folder on this partition and it will sit there until I archive the main production drive, ending up with one copy in production, and two copies on two different backup drives awaiting archiving. Once things have been archived, I clear out that folder.

I also have a new model 2TB Time Capsule/Airport. Time Machine is set to backup to both locations.

Two 2TB G-Technology external drives connected via eSata to the hub. One of the 2TB G-tech drives in my production drive. The iTunes library is there, as are all my photos and movie files. That drive is backed up daily using Carbon Copy Clone (CCC) to a folder on the second G-tech drive (it also serves as a scratch drive for Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, and other software). BTW, I gladly paid for CCC. If a lot of data has changed, I'll manually kick off the CCC backup for that drive earlier in the day.

The internal SSD is backed up every hour using Time Machine on two drives. The main production drive is backed up once (sometimes twice) daily.

All the daily routines are automated.

Once a week I plug in another USB3 drive and CCC both the production drive and the SSD. Then that drive is unplugged and shut down until next week. This takes just a couple of minutes. If I've changed a lot of data in production, I'll do this more often than once a week.

Every month I grab yet another USB drive and copy the production drive contents to it, then store it back in the closet. I use Goodsync for this because I like the way it manages data changes, and how it reports what it's doing and what it's done.

Every three months I pickup a set of USB drives from my sons house, then Goodsync the production data to one drive and CCC the SSD contents to another. Then I return the drives to my son's home.

Simple and easy. I don't worry about losing data.

Hope this helps.

I was horrified to read of all the data loss. And yet I upgraded my three Macs (Mini, Mac Pro & iMac) to 10.9 three weeks ago without issue (beyond the FW sleep problem): all have external HD, two of them LaCie RAIDs with Seagate drives inside, and one even has a friggen My Book on Time Macine duty. And I know a dozen other friends, family and coworkers with 10.9 and external drives without problems as well. And none of these 10.9 users never caught wind of the sudden data loss issues. I did tell them to purge their WD apps...

I agree with PeterMac87, there must be something more in common with these failtures other than OS10.9 and WD apps. Some other driver or software conflict is certainly at play. Most people with WD external drives and 10.9 are not having issues. I noticed many of the idividuals suffering data were photographers with huge Aperture or LR libraries. I wonder if there is some connection to photography/graphics apps? I too keep a huge Aperture library on an external RAID (with redunant backups including offsite!) but after 3 weeks all is well. Could it be Adobe cloud apps? I'm stuck in 2011 with CS5...

Could it be Adobe cloud apps?

I am not using cloud apps, but have LR5 and PS6 on my iMac (late 2013).

I have experienced the data loss on WD MyBook Studio Edition ll FW as described by many. WD has supplied me with a link to download Disk Drill data recovery software, but I have read here that others have tried this, as well as other data recovery software to no avail. For some reason, I did not format this drive as raid 1 as I normally do, but left in raid 0 as it came from WD. Luckily, these are not my photography files, which I have on a WD Thunderbolt drive raid 1 that was not affected (and backed up elsewhere).

I am choosing to wait until we hear from apple, as surely we eventually will, to see if they can come up with a solution.

If anyone has found a solution to rebuilding a raid 0- 2 disk drive, please post.

Good luck to all.

When you have multiple companies hardware being affected by one agent (Mavericks), it's the single agent that's the source of the problem.

Kindly post your link to your evidence. Anybody can throw around a twoine opinion.

Look forward to reading it.

Cheers

Pete

The evidence is the 26 pages of this forum. Multiple brands of HDs affected, all at the same point (after upgrading to Mavericks). It might very well be the old WD software that is causing the conflict with Mavericks, but that doesn't remove Mavericks from the equation. The reason the responsibility lands with Apple is because they are the ones that introduced something new to the equation that was not thoroughly tested and safe. If the reports of early beta testers encountering this problem are true, than it's worse than sloppy, it's negligent. I'm not sure how else you could view this situation, but I am curious to hear it.

So now it might not be Mavericks? 26 pages with repeat posters in a Troubleshooting forum is not evidence of anything. At least genuine contributors are posting relevant links and evidence to their issues.

Pete

If my breakdown above leads you to think I'm not saying it's Mavericks you need to give it more than a quick once-over. I chimed in back on Oct. 28th with my details, actually. And was the one to report on this thread that WD was issuing licenses for recovery software, so that the information could help other people. You might not agree with me as far as source or blame, but calling me unhelpful seems like a stretch.

Or HD app developers took code/design shortcuts and didn't follow Apple guidelines. Apps like Quicken 2007, Office 2008, Bias Peak Pro (company out of business) and CS 5 worked fine OS update after update while other apps break each and everytime. It's not Apple's job to police and test the code of every software devloper out there but is the job of developers to test and update apps so they work with OS updates. I had problems with WD and LaCie apps long before OS 10.9 so I uninstalled them long along. They were funky under OS 10.8x, and apparently WD and a few others were still asleep at the wheel during Mavericks beta testing...

Then, it's not developer's job either. You bought their products before Mavericks released. They are not responsible for it. It's users' fault.