PlotinusVeritas wrote:
People for YEARS have been chirping about NOT buying WD drives on this forum. This is more proof for same.
Buy Toshiba or Hitachi or Seagate drives.
Ive got just under a 100 hard drives, and even the free western digital drives I got,....I gave away.
I assume you have some "magical" WD software you installed which came with your WD? This is the likely source for Mavericks incapability. đ
Ive been using 30 + diffferent external HD on Mavericks now, and run some huge data collections
ALL EXTERNAL HD (the 30+) work fine...... of course they arent WD
I assume you have some nasty WD "utilities" on your external drive?
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=200
Never install external HD software,...never ever never. Regardless of mfg.
A load of codswallop!
I donât mean to be rude but I really do think what you said about WD drives is, under the circumstances, ill considered and, frankly, ignorant of certain facts.
Itâs like having a lorry crash into a 100 year old shop and you are blaming the shopkeeper for the accident.
I've been using WD external drives for years with no problems at all.
I'm guessing that there has been a basic misunderstanding by someone somewhere (I strongly suspect somebody at Apple) about the difference between a Hardware RAID and a Software RAID drive.
My MyBook Studio II 2TB came with two physical volumes, each 1TB. This gave me the option of either having a 2TB external drive (RAID 0) (called âstripedâ I think) or as 1 TB RAID 1 (Mirrored) device (i.e. with two 1 TB physical hard drives with exactly the same information on each). Because each physical hard drive can be removed in the event of failure and replaced, I chose RAID 1, foregoing the extra 1TB space, for security in the event of a failure. I did after all buy it as a backup for files on my iMacâs 750GB Internal drive.
To achieve RAID 1, I used WD's hardware RAID (the driveâs built-in software) and some supplied software (WD Drive Manager). The latter software sets up the Hardware Drive, monitors its condition, reports any problems and provides serial numbers to obtain replacement volumes (amongst other things). The advantage for me doing this is that, if one drive fails, I can whip it out and replace it with a new one. As the software is in the MyBook hardware, all I need to do is (before I reconnect the Drive to my iMac) switch on the MyBook. The MyBook then automatically copies all data from the functioning volume to the newly replaced volume. Thus the external backup is restored.
An alternative option for me was to format the WD drive as RAID 1 using Appleâs Disk Utility (Software RAID - as I understand it). This would have achieved the same drive configuration (RAID 1). However I would not have benefitted from the simple âreplace the volume and it will fix itself convenienceâ of the hardwired WD software. The clincher for me was a comment made by a colleague of mine who was, when I bought my WD Drive (2009/10 - I forget exactly when), my companyâs IT guy - responsible for all our numerous servers and such.
He recommended I bought an Hardware RAID over the Software type - if I could afford it - because with hardware one could just swap drives. He reckoned that with software RAIDs one wasnât necessarily able to copy back the data back to a new internal HD (to do with something I didnât understand - an encryption issue I think).
I suspect the problem is that Apple has inadvertently introduced an incompatibility between Hardware RAID drives and those formatted for Software RAID.
Apple will sort this out of course. It will just take time. I guess at least 12 weeks judging by previous software releases. Maybe up to a year depending on their priorities. Have no illusions here - this wonât be the only problem they will need to solve.
Iâm still with Mountain Lion. Why? I never immediately upgrade for a major revision. The death of Steve Jobs notwithstanding, I simply refuse to do it based on previous experience alone. Iâve been using Macs since 1994. I learnt early on to leave the bug finding to the fan boys.
So thanks for the heads up boys.
I will be leaving Mavericks until at least version 4. Mostly because I upgraded to ML at version 2 and my iMacs problems (mid 2007) didnât get anywhere near sorted until 10.8.4. Even now there is stuff that hasnât been resolved (as far as Iâm aware.
So, to be honest, I think might be sticking with ML despite the temptations of Mavericks. I swapped Snow Leopard for ML which offered must but I lost a lot more stuff that I actually used. Now Iâm being offered more for stuff I may never use because I donât have an iPhone. So Iâm doubly cautious. In time I may be proven wrong, but this thread doesnât exactly inspire me with confidence that I will be. I mean, whoâs going to be worried about WD drive problems (or any other make) if the have convinced every one to use iCloud, DropBox et al?
As for the problems experienced here, has anyone tried Alsoftâs âDisk Warriorâ?
Google them and use their support pages. There might be a work around or even the solution there.
If not, I would suggest disconnecting the external drive and leave it alone until Apple has issued a fix. Then use Disk Warrior (or other product) to repair the drive.
