Q: Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

Any Time Machine backup after a major upgrade will take a long time - many files are updated & need to be copied. It can be slow if the OS is still indexing too.

I tend to leave them overnight before considering if it is being unreliable. Activity Monitor will give you a general idea of the disk speed in it's disk activity tab, but that covers all connected & internal disks, so it's not possible to see a single disk's transfer rate, but if only Time Machne is running you can get an overview of speed, this can help you see if it's 'in range' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates (FYI the rate almost never reaches the theoretical maximum).

Obviously you should power off and check your cables and connections, just in case.

It may also be worth checking the integrity of the disk via Disk Utility > verify & repair. Time Machine is a complex system that will be hampered by any disk or catalog damage.

I don't know if it is a good idea to erase & restart the backup - it really depends on how many copies of your data you have on other disks. If Mavericks turns out to not work you will regret destroying your older TM backups. Perhaps a new disk is a better idea?

Thank you for the response...

I verifified & repaired the disk and there was no errors.

I tried to backup again now and it's just very strange... hangs at 5KB.

Before repairing I tried once already and it hanged at 20GB or so.

I think I'll reformat after a few days, maybe weeks. I created an image to another drive with Carbon Copy Cloner. I will not go back to Mountain Lion for sure so I don't need old backups, but yes - just in case something else goes wrong, maybe it's smart to really check the current situation for some more time.

But I really want to know if Time Machine will work normally when I reformat. I guess I'll wait anyway

Hello Folks....I wrote this earlier and I still think that I am on to something.  Summarizing, I installed Mav sometime in October, 2013.  Immediately, the WD MyBook Studio began reacting negatively to the change in OS.  I tried everything I knew about to get it running again but had no luck.  I next began a long and drawn out relationship with the people at Western Digital.  At first, nothing they suggested made the slightest impact on my computer.  Finally, after a lot of dialogue and emails, they advised me to return my WD drive to them and they would send out a new one.  This happened and I followed all the directions and installed the new drive from scratch with Maverick operating my computer.  I have an IMac desktop by the way....2007 variety with additional memory installed.  The second MyBook would not run either.  I entered phase two of drawn out contacts with the people at WD.  I did everything they suggested.  After several more weeks, they again told me to send the drive in and they would replace it.  A new replacement arrived on Feb. 20.  I again dumped everything on my computer that was from Western Digital.  I installed drive number 3 according to the directions and on screen prompts.  It has worked like a champ since the first computer startup that day.  I even left on a vacation and shut down my computer.  When I returned and restarted I was happy to see the WD My Book started right up and still continues to run flawlessly.

So...to Western Dig. drive owners I say do as I did.  Hound them until they send you one that works. 

Richard

Richard,

I am sort of confused by your note.  I have many Western Digital drives (from Passport to MyBooks) and I have never seen "I installed drive number 3 according to the directions and on screen prompts."  All I ever get is it appears in the Finder window and will show up in the Disk Utility.  I don't ever seeing screen prompts.  Can you elborate a bit on that statement.

I just reformat the drive with Disk Utility as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

I am not on Maverick (only 10.8.5) so maybe this is something new in Maverick.

UPDATE: actually I left it for a long time and it started moving slowly... now it says it will need 11 more hours for 40 GB, I'll just leave it, I hope it doesn't take 30 hours at the end... My questions:

- is this kind of backup with OS upgrade in between 100% reliable? Once I noticed Time Machine was not backuping my whole iPhoto library (30GB)... I'm still scared that something like this would happen, especially in such case

- is actually formatting the drive and starting from scratch a way to achieve more reliable backup?

- can I expect subsequent backups after this one to be much faster? Even for the same amount of data provided that it will be some movies and stuff, not system files as it is the case now.

thank you

e2Photo.....sorry I confused you.  Maybe I wasn't clear.  WD sold me a MyBook in early 2013 and then when I installed Maverick in October, that drive didn't work anymore.  WD then sent me a second brand new MyBook.  I installed it and that one didn't work either.  Then they sent me a 3rd MyBook in February.  That one worked like a charm and continues to work.  That one is my 3rd WD MyBook Studio hard drive in about 1 year.  So my advice is to persist with Western Digital until they send you a drive that works.  I am convinced that they are all not identical to one another in some very small way even though they are the same model and manufacturer.  Hope that helps make my point which is one I am sure no techie will buy.  But I stand by it because of my experience.

e2Photo.....I have never used Disk Utility.  Each of the MyBooks I have owned in the past 12 months were simply plug in and start up following any directions that pop up on the screen while the drive is setting itself up.  The software that melds the drive with my IMac is built into the MyBook.

This is my confusion.  I never get anything that pops up and I don't really install anything.  They just boot.  At least in 10.8.5.  Was there a difference in pop up stuff between Maverick and 10.8.5?

davidhq wrote:

 

- is this kind of backup with OS upgrade in between 100% reliable? Once I noticed Time Machine was not backuping my whole iPhoto library (30GB)... I'm still scared that something like this would happen, especially in such case

Time Machine has been around for years now it should be reliable & stable by now, but a new OS can create new bugs. Personally I don't rely on TM for restoring an entire machine - a full clone is better IMO.

The only way to know how well any backup system works is to use it for a full restore.

davidhq wrote:

- is actually formatting the drive and starting from scratch a way to achieve more reliable backup?

Who can actually say that they have thoroughly tested this and have any real data. I don't think it's a good idea to have one backup on a disk that is used for a multiple years, eventually all hardware stops working, with some luck you can replace a broken interface (USB, Firewire etc) but the disks are tough to fix. TM also stores thousands of files (if not millions) on one disk - it seems risky to rely on the disk catalog to stay healthy for years.

Spread the risk over a few disks created by different tools also use different ways to copy the data & you should be protected. Also think about offsite copies too.

davidhq wrote:

 

- can I expect subsequent backups after this one to be much faster? Even for the same amount of data provided that it will be some movies and stuff, not system files as it is the case now.

The backup will be quicker when there is less data. Time Machine only copies changed files, so you should find that the amount is relative to the amount of files you edit on the Mac. Most backup tools do the same, so subsequent backups are always quicker.

Your 11 hours for 40GB seems slow to me…

11 hours = 660 minutes = 39,600 seconds

40GB = 40,000 MB

40,000 / 39,600 = 1.01 MB/second (that's a megabyte per second).

Look at the wikipedia page for transfer rates:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates

It looks like the disk is running via USB 1 speeds (circa 1996)?

How have you connected this disk?

Have you tried other cables & ports?

Is it hanging off a hub with other slow devices?

System Profiler will also tell you how the disk is connected (the USB rate should be indicated).

If the transfer speed is unexpected it may be time to write the disk off & start on a new backup on a new disk.

e2photo....I can't be 100% sure about what directions I got, if any really, but yes, the drive just boots up, puts whatever it needs into my computer and that's it.  I just checked and found that WD Smartware is not on my computer as it was with the first two drives.  That is interesting.  I clicked on the MyBook icon and all that comes up are a file for my backups and another that says "WD Apps 1 0 0 12.dmg".  So, things are different with this third drive.  All I can suggest to you is to disconnect your drive if there is nothing there that you don't mind losing.  Then use "Clean My Mac" or something like that to uninstall everything that is WD related.  If there is still a drive icon on your screen, drag it to the trash.  Then shut down your computer.  Connect the drive again and then restart.  If that doesn't get the drive working then contact WD and start demanding that they provide you with information to FIX the problem.  They likely won't be able to do that and if you keep at them, they will send you a replacement drive.  When you get a new one, again discard everything that is WD related.  And then install your new drive and restart the computer.  You may get lucky like I did and get one that works. 

Drew,

Thank you for a great answer!

I agree - I also made a clone of the drive with CCC.

I do want incremental backups with TM too... because they're fast... I'd like that to be as reliable as possible because I only do full clone of the drive once every 6 months or so... but I will upgrade my strategy with Time Capsule in addition to Time Machine on external HDD + clone on another HDD.

This is what System Information said:

My Passport 070A:

  Product ID:          0x070a

  Vendor ID:          0x1058  (Western Digital Technologies, Inc.)

  Version:          10.32

  Serial Number:          575843304143395034373733

  Speed:          Up to 480 Mb/sec

Disk wasn't connected to a hub...

I realized that is very very slow, I was complaining about this in previous messages.

Now I'm reporting that the backup suddenly finished - so 11 hours was a big lie. It took 3 hours approximatelly... still slow but I guess it had to compare a lot of files.

I hope that future backups will report time more accuratelly... or if not, then I hope in the next Mavericks update this will be better... I will send them feedback about this.

Thank you again

So I am running OS Maverick 10.9.2

Recently I mounted up my brothers WD My Book Hard-drive just to load some files onto my computer. Since ejecting the HDD I re-connected my Lacie Rugged 1TB hard-drive but it is mounting as the WD My Book.

Disk Utility is recognising my Lacie Hard-drive but under it is showing the My Book as part of the mount.

I hope i'm not sounding like a complete retard but I can't afford to lose over 700gb worth of photos from recent events that I desperately need.

Surely it can't be my Lacie Hard-drive which has corrupted, it must be the OS reading something wrong from somewhere?

I'm sorry if this question has been raised but I just need an answer!

dpalmer_88 wrote:

 

Surely it can't be my Lacie Hard-drive which has corrupted, it must be the OS reading something wrong from somewhere?

 

I'm sorry if this question has been raised but I just need an answer!

dpalmer_88,

This has been raised over & over here…

You should look at the OS to see if you have any WD software installed - it is known to corrupt disks & rename them to 'WD MyBook'. Apple doesn't have the name 'WD MyBook' in any of it's disk tools so it must be WD tools that reformatted it.

Your La Cie will need to have data recovery performed on it if you hope to see the files again - avoid using it at all costs, do not attempt to reformat it, disconnect it & wait until you have decided on how to try to recover data.

If you don't believe it is corrupt you must use another OS (and computer if you don't trust this Mac) to view the disk, that will confirm the state of the HD. Sadly I don't think that will make any difference, but you have nothing to lose by looking at it on another Mac.

I'm not going to repeat since there is a ton of information in this thread, you probably need to look at Drivesavers or the other tools mentioned in this thread.

dpalmer_88,

As Drew states, it sounds like you have encountered the problem the main part of this thread is dealing with - that of WD software reformatting Hard Drives under Mavericks.  To summerise:

In this thread you can find the steps for identifying and removing the Western Digital software.  The first recommended step is to download and run the etrecheck software http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck.

The results of that check will identify any WD software.  If there is none, then you will not have an issue.  If you do, then either update the software by downloading the latest version from Western Digital or manually remove it.

I personally manually removed it by following these steps.

Using Apple’s Activity Monitor from /Applications/Utilities quit the following processes:

WDDMService

WD Quick View

SmartwareServerApp

Delete /Library/LaunchDeamons/com.wdc.WDDMService.plist (Entry that causes WDDM to start.)

Delete /Library/LaunchDeamons/com.wdc.WDSmartWareServer.plist (Entry that causes the SmartWare Server to start.)

Delete /Applications Support/WDSmartware (Removes all SmartWare support programs)

Delete /Application/WDSmartWare (SmartWare user interface)

Delete Library/Preferences/com.wdc.smartware.plist

From System Preferences->Users Login Items remove WDQuickview for all users. (Entry that runs WD Quick View when a user logs in. There should be a single entry for all users. Deleting it from one any account should remove it for all accounts.)

Then run etrecheck again to make sure all the WD software has been removed. 

Definitely don't do anything with the Lacie Drive until you have decided how to go about recovering the data.  In my experience Data Rescue 3 did the best job, but Western Digital are (or were) giving customers a license for Easy Recovery 11, so I would contact WD customer service.  And report the issue to Apple.  I think it's important to let the manufacturer's know that this is still happening to their customers.

In any case, make sure you have back up copies of you data in future.  The pain I experienced was because I'd neglected my back up routine and lost about a month's worth of work, plus some old files which I'd neglected to back up.  I recovered most of the files, but it was a time consuming experience and it wouldn't have happened if I'd been more diligent!

Hi again,

I'm now trying to copy something else to my other external drive... It's extremely slow... so just normal copy of 40GB iPhoto Library. It says it will take 10hours... instead of 15min that would be normal. What is going on?

Drive is NTFS formatted and I'm using Tuxera NTFS. Is that interferring? But I don't think so because on Time Machine it was obviously HFS+ and it was also that slow...

Anything I can do - this is not cool

UPDATE: I realized that iPhoto Library is (of course) not just a normal file... it's a folder with a lot of files.

I tried to copy one 4GB monolithical file and it performed much better.

So is 10h normal for a 40GB iTunes Library on USB 2.0 ?