Q: Mavericks corrupts external hard drive

Tom, thanks! I didn't know 9.1 was on it's way. I am happy to wait for it.

I have backed up whole hard drive using SuperDuper onto Seagate external drive. I made a bootable clone just in case. I just started backing up CrashPlan. It still needs awhile to finish. I'm also replacing the battery so I wanted to have it backed up, also just in case!

R C-R wrote:

 

That doesn't fit the symptom of the drive being reformatted with a partition named "MyBook."

Causation related to "EFi / Mybooks" outcomes as per WD-ware is the source...   by your own admission.

The substrate to the exact mechanics of this operation however is not known, either by yourself or myself.

I, as stated, forwarded, seemingly, the most logical theory to explain the observed outcome.

It may turn out to be the case that the faulty WD-ware is not using fsck as the instrument of corruption, and possibly this outcome both begins and ends with the WD-ware,     without implementation of a fsck false command initiated.

Do you have information that WD-ware or WD-smartware in specific has of its own accord in its command lines, any capacity to initiate a partitioning?

"The bug appears to be an obscure one triggered by some unusual circumstances & rarely encountered sequence of events on users' systems."

I recalled that i was heavily involved in some activities the night before the fatal disaster in the next morning.

I processed Nikon NEF photo stored on the Studio II using NX2 and converted them into jpg.

I transfered them to iPhoto onto the internal SSD system disk (iMac).

I transferred the photo to iPad Mini (with Retina) by using iTune for synchronization.

Studio II dies the next morning.

I do not know whether this combination of events triggered the reformating. The nature of these activities does not look likely. But I had read a post on the WD community that a victim experienced a reformating after a hang-up while burning a CD using iTune.

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

I, as stated, forwarded, seemingly, the most logical theory to explain the observed outcome.

There is nothing logical about it. File corruption & sudden, unexpected reformatting of a drive are two entirely different things. fsck can't reformat a drive; all it can do is attempt to repair the file system & either succeed or fail at that task. There is no flag that can be set in fsck that will cause the drive to be reformatted. To reformat the drive with the telltale "MyBook" volume name, something has to pass that name to diskutil, & it is clear that it is the WD software that is doing that.

Moreover, in your earlier post in which you stated your theory, you referred to an out of date support article (http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2028) that has been archived & clearly states that it applies only to OS 10.3.9 & earlier. I'm not even sure what point you were trying to make by quoting from it but it has nothing to do with reformatting a drive or with any current or recent OS version.

Do you have information that WD-ware or WD-smartware in specific has of its own accord in its command lines, any capacity to initiate a partitioning?

If you are asking if the WD software can initiate reformatting the drive by calling the appropriate routines built into the OS, the answer is yes. Like many other utilities, it offers a GUI "front end" to call various OS routines. The problem is it was doing this spontaneously without presenting any user interface at all.

Is there any real urgent need to jump onto the Mavericks wagon, knowing the potential problem?

In my experience, the system would run smoothly for a few weeks and suddenly die on you. So what would you do? Restore the previous system and lose a few weeks' work?

If I had known that Mavericks+WD could cause this kind of serious problem, I definitely would not "upgrade" to Mavericks, even if it is free.

R C-R wrote:

There is no flag that can be set in fsck that will cause the drive to be reformatted.

To reformat the drive with the telltale "MyBook" volume name, something has to pass that name to diskutil, & it is clear that it is the WD software that is doing that.

 

you referred to an out of date support article (http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2028) that has been archived

You may not be aware, but as pertains the archived article, fsck flags and their commands have not changed in ages, regardless of OSX.

Actually there is such a flag,  the Y flag. Y flag assumes a yes response to all questions asked by the fsck command. This flag lets the fsck command take any action it considers necessary.  Use of this flag is only for purposes of severely damaged file systems.

There is however, of course, no question that the subject of this EFI/Mybook, is WD-ware,...however the tool of that corruption seems very likely to be a falsely directed fsck commands.  A to B, B to A, or A thru B or inversely,       obviously the final action is taken by that of the WD-ware to deposit EFI/Mybook. 

You correctly see the source of this fault and the resultant deposit of EFI/ Mybook re: your "pass that name",    but are not acknowledging any tool used to accomplish this immediately prior to the final observed outcome.             However regardless, the removal of the WD-ware is solution.

What is finally deposited on the external drive is not in question, re: WD-ware,  rather the question is the chain of operations just prior to this observed finality, and the involvement of fsck in this prior operation.

• At a command "fsck -f -y", replacing data of the partition. After fsck runs, the drive is formatted.

estApple I installed Mavericks on my iMac and did a bit of work that day on that machine.  No problems. Even had my RAID array plugged in and was working from it.  The RAID array was actually plugged in during the update, though switched off (note to self - shouldn't update the OS with drives plugged in)!

The next day, I switched on the machine, turned on the RAID array and it immediately mounted as the MyBook/EFI partition.  I had had done nothing else at all that day.  I hadn't even opened any programs.  I think it's more likely to be something that happens during mounting, possibly related to this fsck business, which I only vaguely understand.

R C-R wrote:

If you are asking if the WD software can initiate reformatting the drive by calling the appropriate routines built into the OS, the answer is yes.

The problem is it was doing this spontaneously without presenting any user interface at all.

Do you have for others documentation on this?

In going thru all the below, WD Inc. instructs only Mac OSX resident disk utility for partitioning:

How to partition and format a WD drive on Mac OSX

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3865/session/L3RpbWUvMTM4NjgxMjc 1NC9zaWQvZG9FbG1CSGw%3D

Additionally, as per your earlier comment: "Apparently, the problematic software was the WD Smartware package"       In going thru the WD Smartware documention (below) I find no specific mention of Smartware's capacity for partitioning / reformatting.    Do you have the link for this?

WD Smartware documentation:

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705057.pdf

Blindeyetom:

Fsck is a disk check and repair utility, of course repair and corrupt are empirically identical. Anything can be directed in error to ‘repair’ something when in fact the opposite is occurring.

The cause is WD-ware,   however the 'tool' for this occurrence is unknown, if any.   WD-ware, from its product research does not indicate it acts on its own behalf out of the blue in specifics of formatting or partitioning.  Or in which cases WD-ware of course is known to have acted in depositing EFI/Mybook as observed,   what prompted the WD-ware to initiate this action.

Here is my thinking. Do not install WD software on Mac computers with Mavericks.

If the WD drive is already in the intended RAID type (I or II), there is no need to use WD software to configure it. Just use Disk Utilities to partition and format.

If the WD drive is not in the intended RAID type, this may mean that WD software is needed. Still we can avoid installing the WD software on Mac computers to do the reconfiguration of RAID. Go to a Windows machine. Install the WD software there and use it to reconfigure the RAID type. Then take the WD drive over to the Mac computers and use Disk Utilities to do the partitioning and reformatting. Apple may not like this though.

What of those of us who had no WD software found on our machines, yet Seagate drives were illegible, and an internal drive on my Mac Mini refused to boot and became unrecoverable.  Thank goodness there were backups. Multiple drives, all running Mavericks.  I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone use it as yet.

mikkibarry wrote:

What of those of us who had no WD software found on our machines, yet Seagate drives were illegible,

refused to boot

Did you run Etrecheck and verify this?

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/48217/etrecheck

EtreCheck is a simple little app to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. EtreCheck automatically removes any personally identifiable information from the output.

Define: illegible

As mentioned earlier, regarding boots, many people are posting in this thread about separate occurrences, arbitrary mounts/unmounts being one of them.

Failure to mounts have many possible sources, including HD enclosures, faulty BUS, and SATA bridge cards. 

Did you have more than 1 drive acting an identical fashion?

Yes, I ran Etrecheck.  Nice program and very useful, thanks for that tip.

I don't know the exact phraseology, unfortunately, so let's say corrupted.  Disk utility was unable to repair either of the two brand new drives that were used to back up my failing RAID, which also was not WD.  Both Seagate drives were formatted using Disk utility right out of the box.  After the backups were made, I tried repairing the RAID using Disk Utility, which failed, then tried Disk Warrior.  Neither would mount the drive.  Promise tech support said that one of the drives in te RAID was failing.  I replaced it, wiped the RAID, and began to restore from the Seagate drives.  Part way through the process, the OS indicated that the Seagate drive I was using to restore from, was corrupt and I should immediately try to repair.  Disk Utility could not repair it.  Disk Warrior could not repair it.  However, it did mount, and I was able to get more files off before it failed.  I got it back working again after many passes of Disk Warrior, Disk Utility said it was "ok" on all tests including permissions, yet a day later, the OS indicated it needed to be repaired.  The same scenario occurred with the other Seagate. 

Today, the internal drive that had tested fine would not boot the Mini, and a grey bar appeared under the apple at start up, the bar would fill with darker grey for about 1/10 of its length, then the machine would shut down.  This occurred several times.  Attempting to boot from the Disk Warrior DVD gave a "no entry" symbol and it would not boot.  Alsoft tech support was completely unhelpful.  I rebooted from the recovery partition, and used Disk Utility to try to repair.  it failed.  I rebooted from the recovery partition and reinstalled Mavericks.  I tested the drive again with Disk Utility, which said it was "ok."  Two hours later, it failed again with the grey bar at the bottom, and shutting down after about 1/10 fill.

I've been using Macs since 1984 and this is the first time I've ever had anything near these types of shenanigans. 

Even the internal start-up disk?

"Horrifying" is the word that I would use.

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

Actually there is such a flag,  the Y flag. Y flag assumes a yes response to all questions asked by the fsck command. This flag lets the fsck command take any action it considers necessary.  Use of this flag is only for purposes of severely damaged file systems.

The fsck command never asks to reformat the drive, regardless of what flags are used. Period. It isn't in the code; it isn't in the documentation. fsck, with the appropriate flags, can attempt to repair the file system; it cannot create a new file system. Ever.

The man pages are written as a quick reference for programmers. (That's why all the online Apple ones say "Manual pages are intended as a quick reference for people who already understand a technology.")

You are reading far too much into the "any action it considers necessary" phrase. It cannot perform any action it does not include code for, & it does not include any code that can reformat a drive, create a new partition scheme, create a new file system, etc.

Mikki, that's awful. I am really sorry to hear that. I too have been using Macs for a long time. I used to but don't use iTunes, iPhoto, Mail, Calendar, Contacts or i-anything anymore. And I use an Android phone, didn't much like iPhones. Now that I am getting used to Android, I see how much more you can customize things, see the file system, etc. Nothing's hidden. What I like about Apple is the ability to go into Genius Bar to have something looked at even if it is out of warranty, and I love the warranty, and that it doesn't get viruses. Everything else, meh.