Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

It's definitley an issue with how Mavericks interacts with various controllers of drives, whether that be the 3rd party software like the Western Digital software (certainly the most comon issue it seems) or some piece of fimware in the drive enclosure as the varied issues on this thread suggest and in other articles, for exampke:

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

Apple are not completely to blame, but they should at least be shouldering a portion of the responsibility for fixing this issue and for not spotting it in Beta testing. . Of course our data is our responsibility, that much any and every company out there goes out of their way to make clear.

Apple sent me a program called 'Capture Data' which they had me run on my machine and send the results back to them. I don't know what exactly they are doing to look at a resolution to this issue but they are, it seems, at least working on it. My advice would be to contact Apple, plus the manufacturer of the affected Hard Drive and it's enclosure and report the issue. As I've mentioned here previously, I was told by Apple not to run any data recovery software just yet but to wait until the engineers have looked at the issue and possibly - note I say possibly - come up with a solution that will rever the drive I am using to it's previous state, data intact. If that doesn't happen, then it is a case of running the data recovery software and getting back what you can. I will update here whenever I get news from Apple.

I think it is the WD Driver. See that it partitions and format the drive to a "MyBook" named volume without any warning.

Sure that Mavericks is triggering smt in the WD Driver but wihch logic could implements a format routine without asking.

I have a daisy chain of 6 WD Studio disks with variaiton of Raid 0s and 1s and single disks.

No issues happened to me so far but I once plugged in an external Toshiba USB drive of my friend and it was simply patiritıoned and formatted the moment I plugged it in.

I saw the existing "Photos" folder in finder and the moment I clicked on it it was gone and the EFI and MyBook partititon appeared.

Can you imagine how hard it was to explain to him that "I did not format his drive"? The explanations I made to him was so silly even sounded silly to me. I just mailed him this tread to save my reputation.

The volume name MyBook makes me think that it was rather the WD driver than the Mavericks itself who did this.

I think this is the biggest disaster ever. They had faulty hardware or software that you could replace or patch. However this time it is the data, and I tell you tons of precioous photos, videos and business data. It is history of people.

So sad that people are suffering this.

I run WD Drive Manager v2.2.7 for my TimeMachine backups to a WD MyBook on Firewire. I upgraded to Mavericks and all partitions and data on my Promise Pegasus R6 Thunderbolt RAID were wiped and replaced with a single empty partition called "My Book". Thanks WD!

I dont think its the WD drivers per se. I have a Seagate that was formatted with Mac Disk Utility under Mountain Lion and it was wiped when I plugged it into a new iMac with Mavericks. It may have to do with the drive/file size. The two drives (4TB Seagates) I used that had problems had hundreds of Video_TS files. I had been in the process of backing up my collection of DVDs.

I tend to agree with you Seddul,

I have a couple of Macs here, and each one has at least one WD drive attached, and set to RAID1.

Unfortuneately for me, my machine was the only one which ever had the WD drive manager software loaded on it (so I could set the drives to RAID1, and they do not ship in this configuration). The drives connected to my Mac were 're-partitioned' as EFI and MyBook in front of my eyes.

The other two macs with RAID1 WD drives all are fine. Yes I have backed them up and disconnected those backups!

Much has been written over the past 2 1/2 weeks about whether the issue is WD driver software, Mavericks, HDD firmware, etc.

Can we as a group estabish if any "clean installs" of Mavericks (without the WD drivers intalled) have had a data partition go missing on an HDD? This should help us narrow the field as to whether we are trully dealing with driver issues or something else.

In case anyone is wondering, I was one of the early posters, having two external WD drives - 1 Passport and 1 Studio II both connected via Firewire, and both with their respective software packages (foolishly) installed. The the Studio II is the only HDD to (as I like to suggest) changed the pointer to the partition. The data is still there if a disk recovery software is used (with a missing directory structure and names). My two internal drives (one new and one old) are operate without issue.

ofquiet

You mention "If the reports of early beta testers encountering this problem are true"

Could you perhaps point me in the direction of those reports, or any info on this issue being identified during beta testing, because if that is the case, and the OS was publicly released with this as a known issue I'd be very interested in that...

jeffsphoto21

The two drives (4TB Seagates) I used that had problems

Yes, outside of WD software there is very significant evidence that those without WD software contamination are all using (1.5TB?) 2TB, 3TB, 4TB + drives (RAID or otherwise).

C: Mavericks incapacity to deal with Seagate/Toshiba/Hitachi HD of 2+ terabytes

In collecting every single source of mention both here and 2 contacts,...... there is not one occurrence I've yet seen that involves:

1. corruption of ANY drive in the 1TB OR LESS range without WD software present.

😊

I am. I just lost 2 partitions in a 1Tb WD external hard drive. 😟

In a new Macbook pro computer, no upgrade or anything, just connecting to a new computer.

En the disk utility I can see them, but I cannot mont them. One of them has still the same name, the other one lost the name.

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

In collecting every single source of mention both here and 2 contacts,...... there is not one occurrence I've yet seen that involves:

1. corruption of ANY drive in the 1TB OR LESS range without WD software present.

😊

You can order a new iMac with a 3TB internal drive. I guess this is not affecting the internal drive bus, just the external ????

Did the company that built Healthcare.gov write the driver for Mavericks? lol

I had two drives connected to my iMac i5.

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 formatted the WD MyBook soon as i got it.... but i dont know about the Seagate. I never use any Drive Software.

My files are still there and show the size allocated, but will not open. Only some files were affected (80%).

damaged PDF's say "It may be damaged or use a file format that Preview doesn’t recognize."

Text fiels say "The document “____” could not be opened."

etc... most files are damaged.

Also seems like the files damaged all have the modified date of Nov8th, between 11:32am and 2pm. I was working in InDesign like i do everyday and didn't notice anything happen until i tried to access some of my files.

pablotravel

I am. I just lost 2 partitions in a 1Tb WD external hard drive.

Verify you dont have WD software installed by running the WD uninstaller

In cases of WD software being present,...drive size of course, is irrelevant

Its not just about WD software/hardware. I lost a Seagate drive formatted with Mac Disk Utility and hooked up through USB. Its Mavericks.

There were mentions of this from beta testers early in this forum, it might have been in the WD forum as well, but I'm pretty sure it was this one.

A Seagate Desktop 4TB drive connected via FW800 (have tried USB 2.0), same problem.

OSX cannot repair, mount or delete the greyed out (un-mountable partition).

Nov 12 10:58:54 kernel[0]: hfs_swap_BTNode: record #-1 invalid offset (0x0000)

Nov 12 10:58:54 kernel[0]: hfs: node=13216 fileID=4 volume=Backup001 device=/dev/disk4

Nov 12 10:58:54 kernel[0]: hfs: Runtime corruption detected on Backup001, fsck will be forced on next mount.

Nov 12 16:54:03 kernel[0]: CoreStorageGroup::completeIORequest - error 0xe00002d9 detected for LVG "Backup001" (547C5767-6075-4522-8138-31976D157092), pv 4D075818-755A-4A17-A270-5A55B5D2E483, near LV byte offset = 2260238336.

Nov 12 16:54:03 kernel[0]: disk3: device/channel is not attached.

Nov 12 16:54:03 kernel[0]: CoreStorageGroup::completeIORequest - error 0xe00002e4 detected for LVG "Backup001" (547C5767-6075-4522-8138-31976D157092), pv 4D075818-755A-4A17-A270-5A55B5D2E483, near LV byte offset = 1727528960.

Nov 12 16:54:03 kernel[0]: disk3: media is not present.

Nov 12 16:54:03 kernel[0]: CoreStorageGroup::completeIORequest - error 0xe00002e4 detected for LVG "Backup001" (547C5767-6075-4522-8138-31976D157092), pv 4D075818-755A-4A17-A270-5A55B5D2E483, near LV byte offset = 0.

Nov 12 16:54:03 kernel[0]: disk3: media is not present.

Nov 12 16:54:03 kernel[0]: CoreStorageGroup::completeIORequest - error 0xe00002e4 detected for LVG "Backup001" (547C5767-6075-4522-8138-31976D157092), pv 4D075818-755A-4A17-A270-5A55B5D2E483, near LV byte offset = 4000019382272.

Nov 12 16:54:03 kernel[0]: disk3: media is not present.

Nov 12 16:54:03 kernel[0]: CoreStorage::recover() PV 4D075818-755A-4A17-A270-5A55B5D2E483 from group "Backup001" (547C5767-6075-4522-8138-31976D157092) has been marked missing.

Nov 12 16:54:03 kernel[0]: disk3: memory allocation error.

Nov 12 16:54:03 kernel[0]: CoreStorage: terminating group "Backup001" (547C5767-6075-4522-8138-31976D157092) is BUSY

Nov 12 16:54:03 com.apple.kextd[21]: LVG changed

Nov 12 16:54:03 diskarbitrationd[30]: unable to repair /dev/disk3 (status code 0x00000008).

Nov 12 16:54:03 diskarbitrationd[30]: unable to mount /dev/disk3 (status code 0x00000001).

Notes:

No WD/Seagate software EVER installed.

This drive is used as a TM backup drive only.

This is the 3rd time OSX has corrupted the partition on this drive.

To delete the parition, I have to boot into Linux to delete it. Then OSX's Disk Utility is able to create a new partition (yes, I could have created a partition under Linux).

Oddly enough, I have a 2TB WD FW800 drive in the same FW chain, no problems at all.