Q: Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

Hi Jsac,

As a wondershare user, is it worth it to purcha this app?

I am one of those folks who had WD External HD and my data got  screwe/ washed away after using new update -mavericks.

Went to bestbuy and they cant help me there (well they said they can send it to their upper IT for a minimum payment of $250. Depending how much work theyll have to do, it can go as high as $500, so I had to decline)...

I stumble upon your post and just downloaded the trial version for Wondershare. It shows some of the photos of my kids (which what matters to me the most, because I have ALL memory-photos there.. and some important files as well), which im assuming is all what it could recover from it.

I just want to get your input if it worked perfectly for you (Wondershare)? Please if you would please be so kind to email me @ gmail (mcigucci), id greatly appreciate it a lot.

Thanks so much.

Im so sorry to hear that gameon. Im experiencing the same thing.

I thought I was losing my mind when I realized my data was all gone from my WD extDrive after updating to Mavericks, then I stumble upon this feed.

To anyone who can help me, please. All my boys' memories growing up (photos, videos, documents,  etc) are all in my heard drive. And it trully breaks my heart that it feels like they are as good as gone

I have not formatted my WD nor wrote anything in it at all, for I have heard thats the first thung thing you must NOT do. So now im just on standby for help

Goodluck and thanks to all who are in this feed, finding any help possible to share to others.

~ Cecille ~

Mcigucci wrote:

 

To anyone who can help me, please. All my boys' memories growing up (photos, videos, documents,  etc) are all in my heard drive. And it trully breaks my heart that it feels like they are as good as gone

Learn from this unfortunate episode. Even if you had not been affected by this issue and everything was fine, you were still on the path to lose all of those important files eventually. Not having backups or a backup strategy guarantees eventual data loss. Every storage device ever made WILL fail. It's not a question of if but when. You MUST backup your data if you want to keep it. How important the data is to you determines the backup strategy to use. This has broken your heart so I assume this data is very important to you. Make multiple backups frequently, possibly storing one of those backups in a fire resistent safe or off site in a safe desposit box.

As for your current situation you should contact Western Digital. They have been trying to help customers who are affected by this. They are providing advice and purchase codes for data recovery software. Good luck.

i am not willing to follow this problem anymore.

i am done with western digital. they did not do any test prior to release of 10.9, it strongly seems.

sold my drive at ebay, its not working under 10.9 (but works in 10.8)

i had a case at wd support since 6 weeks. they sent me a replacement drive under warranty,

but same problem with the brand new drive. i completely migrate to lacie. have got 4 drives from lacie since

5 years and never had to suffer like this with its drives.

thanks for your help nevertheless, i wont follow this thread anymore.

best.. p.

A further lesson of this WD unfortuante event for me is that RAID is not good enough. In fact, it is better to have two separate disks, rather than putting them in a RAID configuration. One is connected to the computer and the other is not, execpt during backup.

F**Kin A!!!

Thank you REDDERS38 - and all prior entries as I would surmise that they all contributed to the end result.

I originally had an WD MyBook 3TB drive that I purchased along with my MAC mini... It worked fine even after I changed 'up' to Maverick. About 3 weeks after the change, I came home from work, booted up my mini and the external WD drive did not 'register' or show up. Yet it did in DiscUtility, as has been the case with many here in this thread. DU, after verifying and repair said the disc was 'OK.' --- I tried the /Volumes approach to see if my data was still there and noticed that all files on the external hard drive showed locked to me, so seemingly permissions had changed somehow. A couple times in DU (as I had tried numerous times to use in hopes of something being different the next time...) the external drive showed up with a renamed or now unnamed partition of "MyBook" and showed the disc as empty. I uplugged it and bought a new LaCie Porche 3TB external harddrive in hopes that by taking advise from an alternate thread here, I could use a friends macbook that was running an older version OS.

I took the MyBook and the LaCie to a friend and used his MacBook that was using Maverick - and just tested to see if the drive would show up...

Sure enough IT DID!!! So I copied ALL the files I needed to the LaCie and thought all was better and that maybe it was a problem with the WD drive. EVEN though it was working fine on this alternate MacBook.

Got home, plugged in my LaCie and it seemed to work fine with all files showing and working. Roughly 16 hours later... The created drive name has now GHOSTED as well, BUT the LaCie original partitiion that came already separated was in tact.

SO I read through ALL 79 pages here and tried deleting ALL associated WD files and dropped theh /Volumes file into the Spotlight Privacy folder and FINALLY tried this jump to the Guest User option.

WORKED!!!

All files showing and IN tact.

Now who's to say that there aren't some hidden WD files still on the computer and things won't go haywire again, but this was a **** of a lot cheaper than running out and buying another external harddrive.

Appreciate everyone's input here!

THANK YOU!!!

I have a Mac Mini and an Omega 2TB and a Lacie 3Tb drive.

A while back afte changing to Maverick my Lacie drive, with backup partition, locked up and showed no files.

After restarting all files came back. Apple changed the Lacie drive no questions aksed. for a new one. After installing and copying all files back. The lacie drives keeps locking up, but after switching off the power to the Lacie drive and back on files return and it continues to run fine for some time.(1 to 8 hours).

During this time Aperature also locks up as the library is on this drive.

I have tried veryfying, repairing permissions, deleting plist all to no aviail.

My only option to date is switching off the power and repowering whenever I want to use the computer.

The Iomega drives never locks up.

Any one any ideas on how to stop the Lacie drive locking up.

I´m at a similar point now.

If I disconnect My Book drive from the MBP and the power and then reconnect it again it works, but at very slow speeds (writing at maximal 4 to 5 Mbs with FW800) After 3 days of error saying TM Backups tonight finally i´ve a complet TM backup. I don't know if I can trust in this copy because it have stopped at least 4 or 5 times and then I had to disconnect and reconnect all for continuing copying.

I've uninstalled all WD software and removed the 4 .kext files that are somewhere in the Library folder but nothing helps. DU at the most times can´t repair the disk and permission fix can´t be used because it´s in gray letters.

The drive is a few weeks old (2-3? I don´t remember)

Some ideas?

So did you install any of the WD file management software that came with it? If you did then best uninstall and start all over again without it. It is crapware and not needed and seems to be the problem with Mavericks. My "my book" never missed a beat but that crapware is still in the drive folder unused.

peter_watt wrote:

[...] that crapware is still in the drive folder unused.

Which folder do you mean?

The My Book comes with folders already written on the disk containing software they want you to install to manage your data. People who followed the advice/instruction to install it are finding problems with Mavericks.  There is no purpose in it so installing it would be a mistake.

Yes, i´ve installed the WD software at the begining, but after reading thousands of forums i´ve uninstalled all that things from the MBP and also deleted the four wd_something.kext drivers that are installed somewhere in the library. I´ve also reformatted a few times the drive.

Which folder do you mean?

It seems from following this thread that some people have managed to find various ways to get their drives to show up with data intact.  Most people however seem to have had to resort to using data recovery software to recover their files (which is what I had to do). Perhaps someone who's been following htis from the beginning and has a good grasp on the various steps and solutions would like to write some kind of document people having this problem could be pointed toward?  For people coming new to this thread the useful information is perhaps difficult to extract from the 79 pages! Though there is a lot of useful information here...

Any volunteers for that?

It doesn't matter what folder, just never install any WD file management software you might be presented with when you plug it in.

Except in a very few cases, the CD that comes in a box, or the "tools" that are provided with any generic product are useless. Typical exceptions would be 3G dongles with drivers and tied to a phone company.  But a hard drive is a hard drive and totally generic. Time machine and OSX has all the software needed.

peter-watt, i agree that third-party drive management software isn't necessary but according to a previous post WD is offering a FIRMWARE UPGRADE for WD passport drives.