Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

Update on hard drive partition and reformat.

Drive rescue seems to work, but there are som flaws in the recovery portion of this utility that is making it more difficult to salvage the data off drives.

Once the files to recover are selected, Data Rescue 3 over estimates their file size. This becomes an issue when you try to recover 1.5 TB of .MOV / .MP4 files and it says it requires 7TB of space to deliver it too. Since my 11 or so drives are down, this would require a NAS array of some type for the partial recovery. Selecting smaller file sizes results in having to sit at the computer while they copy every few minutes, or 1/2 hour which still has some flaws as when you select 30 files, only 3 may copy over oddly enough. Even with the files copied over it's then, hours of sorting and moving files back and forth between the drives.

I am not sure why Apple has not pulled Mavericks from the store, in fact. I don't think that this whole issue has made a big enough stir, and the right team knows about it. - Else they would make some type of announcement.

If you are interested in getting your name on a list for lost hard drives. Send an email to

applelostdata@gmail.com

Same problem on newer iMac with Mavericks. Pluged both the 1T backup and 5T Drobo directly into iMac USB and Lightning ports. Both drives (or drive sets in Drobo) Spontaniously drop off line.

Though plugged in and active they are not recognized by Disk Utility as unmounted. Only way to remount is NOT to reconect plugs but to restart the machine.

Very frustrating.

Something curious.

I had disable spotlight in one of my 3 partitions. That's the one that is still working, the other 2 are the ones that unmount in my WD My Passport 1Tb hard drive.

May be spotlight is part of the problem?

VERY INTERESTING!!

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)

INTERESTING part is... The WD Drive was already added to the Spotlight Privacy to "Prevented Spotlight from searching these locations" BEFORE i installed Mavericks.

The affected Drive had certain folders in the Privacy and those specific Folders were NOT affetcted but all other files on that Drive were. hmmmm... And all the files affected were between 11:50am and 2:00pm. I will see if i can find out if there is a log file of when Spotlight Indexes. I know I've caught Sportlight Indexing more than it should latelly too.

So MAYBE this IS a Spotlight issue??

I know there are people in this forum that the problem keeps happening repeatedly, maybe they can TEST out this theory and add that drive to the "Spotlight Privacy" and see if that eliminates the problem.

I found this obscure but very helpful tip after scouring the net. Add "/Volumes" into spotlight privacy (since ext HDs are mounted under this folder).

So open up terminal and enter: "open /Volumes"

The above command will open a finder window containing /Volumes. Drag and drop that folder into Spotlight.

Spotlight will no longer index any ext HD. Worked for me, I can mount and unmount properly now.

Note: I'm using a Samsung ext HD, have not tried this on any other manufacturer

e2photo I would suggest don't update to Mavericks yet. The issue is not just with WD software/Firmware, but with various interactions between Mavericks, Software for managing hard drives and firmware in the drive enclosures. While WD have provided the uninstaller for their software, Apple still have not released an update to Mavericks that addresses this issue. How long that will be in coming who can say. If you do want to update to Mavericks, make sure your multiple backups of your data are up to date (obviously), install the OS and then test your drives one at a time and see if any show any issues.

I had no issues with WD and Seagate portable drives plugged into my Laptop running Mavericks, it was only when I installed the OS on my iMac and plugged in a RAID array that I encountered an issue (that of the Mybook & EFI partitioning of the array). I promptly rolled back the OS as soon as I found out the cause (that of the incompatibility between Mavericks and the drive controller software and enclosure firmware).

I also then discovered some WD software on my iMac after the fact (I never intentionally installed that!). I found it thanks to instructions on this forum from AKabas

I never installed this, and it never showed up in a spotlight search but lo and behold there it was in:

/Library/Application Support (WDDriveManager)

/Library/LaunchDaemons (com.wdc.drivemanagerservice.plist)

I ran the WD uninstaller software - http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=124&sid=214&lang=en

You might not encounter any issues with Mavericks once this software is removed. But I for one am sticking to Mountain Lion.. I have a case open with Apple tech support relating to this issue so am waiting on some info from them...

blindeyetom wrote:

e2photo I would suggest don't update to Mavericks yet. The issue is not just with WD software/Firmware, but with various interactions between Mavericks,

+1

And I owe you an apology for being so hard on you earlier in this thread. I didn't realize the depth of this problem. My fault and I'm sorry.

BTW, I think the early sign of OS driver problems began with 10.8.5, I can't let my machine sleep without the USB drives being ejected improperly, even though I have the supplemental update installed.

In addition, when I installed iTunes 11.1.3 over the weekend (so I could install iOS7 on my phone - DON'T get me started on that debacle) now I can't burn an audio disc in iTunes - "disc is in use by another program" error, even though nothing is using it. I can burn discs with Toast. Go figure. So I'm forced to update iTunes so I can install iOS7 and in turn, Apple breaks my cd burner.

Updates have become a joke in the past 2.5 years.

I upgraded three Macs to OS 10.9, all with external drives (one was a WD but no WD apps), all were busy doing spotlight indexing at first but no problems with data loss after 3 weeks. I still think there is another conflicting app or driver these failtures have in common. After all, the majority of users didn't experience problems with their Time Machine, RAID or other external drives.

Gochugogi wrote:

After all, the majority of users didn't experience problems with their Time Machine, RAID or other external drives.

There is no way to know those numbers. Rule of thumb: for every person who openly complains of a problem, there is another twenty people who don't complain openly.

One reason Apple seems to be dragging their feet on this may be due to being overwhelmed by this problem. On the other hand, I could be wrong... 😉

I lost a Seagate drive to Mavericks. I had also noticed that my external blueray/dvd burner was acting up with toast when I had my external drives attached. Then one of the drives got erased. When I detached my remaining drives, and started using toast and the external burner without the external drives attached, the drive and Toast worked flawlessly. I had been reading/writing with files on those external drives. Now when I just read/write with Toast and the burner just using the internal SSD drive on my new iMac - everything works fine (i.e. without any external drives attached).

After reading all the forums related to this problem - a thought occured to me. Since this problem seems to be related to Mavericks regardless of which drive mfg. we're talking about - could we all be seeing the results of some Stuxnet type worm/virus/trojan that Apple has unknowlingly been ditributing with their Mavericks download?

I see from Roaring Apps, that some versions of Toast are compatible with Mavericks, but not all. I erase my externals of proprietory software and reformat the disks specifically for Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and for GPT, before using them.

http://roaringapps.com/apps?index=t

ciu5781 wrote:

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.

I can't agree. Before updating to Mavericks I (a user) checked WD's website to download the latest Drive Manager/Raid Manager software suitable for Mavericks and my My Book Studio II drive. WD wrote there that their software (WD_Drive_Manager_Installer_3_0_1.zip) would be Mac OS 10.9 compatible (before removing it from their site) hence I assumed that they had tested it under Mavericks!!

Luckily I had a problem updating my firmware (maybe due to confusing information in the WD firmware update PDF document) und postponed my Mavericks upgrade.

I have solved my problem, and I have recover my lost partitions, and all my data!

My solution here, try and let me know if it get fix for you too.

As forgottendiarysuggested:

Add "/Volumes" into spotlight privacy (since ext HDs are mounted under this folder).

So open up terminal and enter: "open /Volumes"

The above command will open a finder window containing /Volumes. Drag and drop that folder into Spotlight.

After that connect again your hard drives with lost data and lost partitions.

They will probably still don't mount, but you can go to the disk utility. You will see the partitions back but unmounted. Repair the hard drive, repair de partitions, try to mount them again... I had to try to repair two times and try to mount another couple of times... But finally I got my 2 lost partitons back!

My hard drive is a WD My Passport 1Tb with 3 partitions. Good luck!

pablotravel &

forgottendiary & aaronkine

That's great you resolved that! I'm eager to try that but before I do I'll send that info to the Apple tech support guy I've been dealing with. I'm still paranoid about plugging drives into my Macs at the moment. I'll let you know if that solution is one I try and if it works for me. Thanks for sharing! Can I ask if you had just a drive mount problem or if you had the repartitioning as Mybook & EFI problem as well?

And RogerOut thanks for the apology. And for the positive contributions. And by the way I hate iTunes with a passion. I even paid for iExplorer so I could bypass iTunes when plugging in my iOS devices. http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/