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Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

My WD MyBook studio 2TB (fw800) suddenly shows up empty on my desktop after a Mavericks upfrade on my mid 2009 mbp.


Disk Drill is now scanning the WD, and the files are there, about 1,4 TB of it...


How do I get the disc structure back?


I have no Mountain Lion OS-mac to test the WD in..


I had a bootable Mountain Lion on the WD, could that be the problem?


In Disk Drill MyBook has four units; EFI(200Mb), MyBook(1,8Tb), Unallocated 128Mb and Lost partition (200Mb)

iOS 7, Ipad mini + ios7

Posted on Oct 24, 2013 1:08 AM

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1,484 replies

Feb 14, 2017 1:32 PM in response to AKabas

I was using a WD external as my Time Machine. Did not have a problem after Mavericks upgrade but unplugged it out of fear that I would lose everything.


Just followed @Akabas post and looked in my System/Library/Extensions folder and found NO WD files in the folder. Maybe that's why I did not have a problem.


I still have not plugged any of my WD drives back into the computer yet. Will wait for a day or two. This is scary.

Feb 14, 2017 1:32 PM in response to AKabas

I was a first day Mavericks guy who installed it within hours after it came out. I did a Clean Install.


My "Time Machine" is a WD external drive that was originally a PC disk that I reformatted to work with Mac. It worked fine, no problems, and was used to retreive files while putting my system back together -- although it was slow. It even made a few backups before I shut it down.


I have two other WD Externals: one is a PC drive that I reformatted to use on the Mac and the other is "My Passport for Mac" that was obviously a Mac disk from the factory. I never knowingly installed any WD software.


Upon reading this thread (when it was just one page long in Apple's support forum), I unplugged my Time Machine, and have been afraid to plug in my other two WD External drives out of fear that they would be wiped clean.


AKabas: I've checked ALL of the folders you and others mentioned in this thread -- several times -- and never found any WD, Western Digital, or wdc, files or sub-folders in them.


As a point of reference, I do not have a folder marked "Incompatible Software".


Question to anyone who cares to reply: Do you think I'm okay and can plug in my WD External Drives? or should I wait until Apple has a update to address this issue? I'm very uncomfortable with installing driver updates from Western Digital. First is I've never done any WD driver update on any of my drives, nor do I see a need to do so; and, secondly, if I wanted to do a driver update, how do I do that if the drive could be reformatted when I plug it in to do a driver update -- that will prevent it from being reformatted? I prefer an Apple solution rather than a WD solution.


Somewhere earlier in this thread, someone mentioned they spoke with Apple and their rep said it was not an Apple problem. I disagree. Who wrote the code that went into effect and wiped clean the drives without warning you something was about to happen. If Apple wrote that code then they are responsible. They should have put instructions into Mavericks to warn a user that a Disk or Drive reformat utility was about to wipe clean a disk, and given you the option to say no so you could eject the Disk before it was killed.


I am an APPLE Fanboy and have used their products since the Apple IIc (which I wish I still owned) and VisiCalc, and will continue to use their stuff in the future. This is a horrible problem that someone should have seen coming. But I believe that Apple must, and will, come up with a fix -- hopefully very soon. That's my 2 cents on this.

Feb 14, 2017 1:32 PM in response to AKabas

I ran WD's product as a precaution. I already checked all of the folders mentioned by AKabas and did not have any WD files in any of them.


WD's package DID NOT tell me what, or if any, products were removed. However, it added a Uninstall pref file into one of the mentioned folders (I don't remember which one -- I just went looking in each of them and there it was). I highlighted the pref file and moved it to the trash -- just to safe. Then restarted my mid 2010, 27 inch, 2.8GHz Core I5, iMac.


Next, I held my breath and plugged in one of my WD external drives for the first time since Oct. 24. It showed up and all was fine and then unplugged it. Whew... Still haven't plugged in my WD external Time Machine drive but it should be okay.

Oct 24, 2013 12:27 PM in response to chattphotos

FYI, the Drive was not corrupted immediatly after the upgrade. It was running ok for a while, but after one reboot it showed up as an empty drive with the "MyBook" name.


I was able to restore some data with some data rescue software at a friends place (basically got files with no names now), so it seems the partition table got corrupted.


Another interesting thing with Mavericks and this drive seems to be that the drives don't seem to spin down, when my iMac sleeps. I have to shutdown to make the drives go sleep. In Mountain Lion the disks would sleep when the iMac was sleeping.

Oct 25, 2013 11:02 AM in response to Trocafish

Also found the same problem. I sent Western Digital a support request, but have had no follow-up.


At first I suspected it was an issue with the SSID not being registered after the upgrade, but this does not now appear to be the case.


A few interesting facts:


  1. I have two external WD drives. One is a 1TB Passport connected via Firewire, and was connected when I performed the Mavericks upgrade. All is OK!
  2. The second unit is a WD My Book Studio Edition II 2TB connected via Firewire, and (I believe) was not connected during the upgrade. After the upgrade, I was unable to access the contents. The WD Raid Manager software says the drives are healthy, but 0% of the space has been used.
  3. Connected this same drive to an older iMac via USB (OS X 10.6), and shocked to find that again I cannot access any contents. Raid Manager shows all healthy, but 0% of the space used.

Oct 25, 2013 11:19 AM in response to Trocafish

Curious!


I'm starting to wonder if it is only the MyBook Studio series of hard drives that are affected (as opposed to all Western Digital external drives - save GaryB's GTech / WD units) ?


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Sorry, I think my idea is now false, as a claim of a regular MyBook has been made.

Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

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