Q: Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

Just to add my story. MacBook Air mid 2012. WD My Passport connected with USB When I mounted the drive it's directory was apparently erased in an instant and I was unable to access the contents of the drive. Connecting it on another Air running 10.8, it again failed to mount. However I ran disc utility, which recognised it, but failed to repair the disc. But after this the drive was mounted correctly and its contents accessible on the 10..8 machine. However it is no longer bootable. I was not using any of the WD utilities except the partition WD Smartware which mounts when you plug in the drive. No RAID or other complications this time. So there !

Hi Steve,

So in another word, after you run disk utility, you are able to retrieve all your files with the correct file structure in 10.8?

Hope this can be a solution for us using RAID as well.

Cheers,

Gordon

Oh that life were that simple !! That is only what happened to me. Yes the file structure and data seemed intact. The only problem was that the drive was not bootable. Disc utiility failed at "updating boot partitions"

Stay calm. Most  problems are eventually solved but those who have lost large amount of data will be pleased to find a solution to what is doubtless a major problem.

Steve... your case is totally diferent.. than the formatted disks rest of us...

Just found this on the WD forum - maybe this helps others too:

After I discovered the problem, I disconnected all my drives and sent the WD software on my Mac to the trash, then waited for help or resolution. Then, last night, I received a call from a concerned help representative at WD. He asked me to plug in my WD MyBook Studio Edition for Mac to the USB port. I did so and the data was all there exactly as it should have been. We then tried it again via Firewire and the computer did not acknowledge it. The Rep told me that WD was working on a solution to the problem.

 

So, I plugged back in through the USB port and all was fine. Then I tried to back up the WD HD and could not (USB too slow I guess). So I turned the HD off and disconnected the power and the USB cable. Then I plugged in the firewire, then the power and low and behold, there it was along with all my data. So I backed up everything, and then shut down the computer, and tried restarting. The drive was still there.

Source: http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/All-data-gone-on-My-Book-Stud io-II/td-p/602387/highlight/false/page/8

Gordon,

The recovery tool I used creates individual folders for each file type/extension, but yes, all of the files with the same extension were lumped together into the same folder.

Lightroom was able to import all of the photos from this one large folder and actually they seem to be ordered chronologically.  I will need to move these to individual folders and re-organize the data.

YAY: finally, kudos to 3 guys at Promise (Jerry, Stephen and Victor) (i hope, but everything seems to be working again, although i did lose all my older backups).

NUMBER ONE PROBLEM: MY IMAC DID NOT HAVE THE PROMISE UTILITY INSTALLED. I INSTALLED THAT FROM THEIR SITE DOWNLOAD CENTRE, BUT THEY ALSO SENT ME A LINK TO IT.

granted, they haven't quite released the fully-functional mavericks (osx 10.9) version yet, but the older one does work in command mode to get reports out of it.

AFTER THAT, IT WAS NOTED THAT MY FIRMWARE VERSION WAS OUT-OF-DATE, AND IT REQUIRES THE LATEST ONE TO WORK WITH MAVERICKS (PERMISSION ISSUES, SOMETHING I ALREADY SUSPECTED WAS HAPPENING BUT APPLE ERROR MESSAGES ARE GETTING TO BE LIKE MICROSOFT IT SEEMS)

NEXT ITEM, MAC USERS CAN'T DOWNLOAD THE FIRMWARE UPDATE FROM PROMISE AND EXPECT IT TO WORK, THE .IMG FILE THEY HAVE WON'T WORK UNDER MAVERICKS (APPLE'S NEW PROPRIETARY FILE FORMAT BS AGAIN I SUSPECT).

SO, YOU MUST-MUST-MUST HAVE THAT PROMISE UTILITY INSTALLED AND THEN 'CHECK FOR UPDATES'.  THEN INSTALL THE UPDATE VIA THAT UTILITY.  THE INSTRUCTIONS SAY TO POWER CYCLE YOUR PEGASUS OR REBOOT YOUR SYSTEM... YOU MUST-MUST-MUST DO BOTH.

THEN, GOD, DEMONS, AND OTHER ASSPORTED SAINTS AND PROPHETS (PROFITS?) PERMITTING, YOU'RE UP- AND-RUNNING AGAIN.

I SURE WISH THE **** SOMEONE HAD SAID ALL THIS A WEEK AGO INSTEAD OF 'OH YAH, WELL WE TESTED EVERYTHING AND OURS WORKS'

GET THE WORD OUT TO PROMISE USERS GUYS AND GALS... GET THAT PROMISE UTILITY AND DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE!!!

AND IF YOU CAN'T GET THAT HD TO WORK... THEY WILL SEND YOU THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES - THESE GUYS DO GET IT DONE (BUT ONLINE SUPPORT AT PROMISE.COM... PAH)

if you use paragorn NTFS or similar app for your NTFS ext hard drive, your MUST upgrade to the new release. The new paragorn NTFS works fine with Mavericks.

Coppying data to a new drive now.

Drive had not been appearing at all in Mavericks.

I have a windows 7 install and bootcamped into it.

I installed MacDrive and the trial period ran out.

I booted into Windows with the Western Digital Mybook 2TB studio edition 2 attached by usb.

Got a windows prompt that it needed a driver update.

Updated drivers.  Everything appeared in windows, but could not be copied over with MacDrive out of trial period.

Had a clean install of Mavericks with no WesternDigital software on it.

Rebooted into Mavericks, the drive appeared, the files appeared, and I am copying them over to another usb'd drive.

Hope this helps someone else.  This has been a grizzly transition for me.

sussing it out,was your drive wiped out and renamed to "MyBook", too?

AKabas,

Initially when I tried to access the drive from Mavericks it made stuttering noises.  After, perhaps, an hour the drive appeared but the files couldn't be accessed.  It had its original name.  Then, when I tried to reboot and access it subsequently, nothing appeared.  No drive on the desktop, nor in the finder, or in disk utility.

Now the drive appears everywhere and I am transferring the files to another drive.

Western Digital Software Unintaller released 11-4-2013

For Mac

WD Software Uninstaller

• File Name: WD_Software_Uninstaller_1_0_0_8.zip
• File Size: 1.26 MB
• Version: 1.0.0.8
• Publish Date: 11/4/2013

i am able to recover files using Disk Drill - but as it was my 3tb seagate that was wiped - my iTunes library and personal compositions - it is not possible to sort and organise what Disk Drill spits out - as with all the recvoery programs they organise files into audio, movies...etc, and rename them. there are 80-90000 files.

My files are there - what is missing that the recovery progams cant recover, is the directory structures and file names. without this, I fear I have lost my music server and 6 years of work.