Is it safe to work from my Western Digital drive?

Western Digital has sent emails out to registered owners of their drives. They recommend unistalling all of their supplied software until they have completed their investigation. I received that email myself. Visit their website for more details and instructions.

In my personal case I don't have any of the Smartware software installed and I'm not having any trouble. But I do have an issue with two of WD's older drvies I still use. They no longer can be put to sleep. A newer 2TB drive seems perfectly okay though.

Saddact,

WD is now saying that if you have upgraded to Mavericks you should not write to the disk, but rather disconnect the drive and contact their TS.

Mark

If you look at the massive thread on data loss it's less of a dilemma…

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5475611?start=0&tstart=0

Many people have lost data, many different disk types, many different Mac types, all of the connection types have been affected.

Some users have been hit right after the Mavericks upgrade, others have been hit weeks after continual use of the disks (some were beta testing 10.9). Some altered the connection order & the data was gone.

Western Digital has a 4 week old thread on the topic.

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

The only answer for getting data back has been "buy [insert: disk recovery tool of choice]" or "send to [insert: expensive data recovery specialist]".

If you continue to work on this disk & lose all the data on it how will you feel having known you could prevent it? The evidence is that Mavericks kills external disks.

There is a simple safety net solution for this issue. Boot into another OS & backup the disk to another external drive. Then you can continue to use Mavericks with less worry. Just keep the backup away from Mavericks.

I don't believe you do need the WD SmartWare software to read the disk, but to be honest that point is a little moot if your data disappears from existence because of 10.9.

saddact UK

Hi I have a 2TB WD

Unless funds are very tight, buy another 2TB for $100 U.S. and clone your drive to same

Regardless of this occurrence with Mavericks ALL vital data backup needs at least one redundant copy

First realization is that your data on your computer is highly vulnerable

Second realization is that you need a HD backup of your OS and data

Third realization is that you need at the very least a secondary HD backup

Fourth and final realization is understanding the fragility of any and all HD & ferromagnetic storage, and that vital data needs to be “frozen” on unassailable redundancies across multiple storage platforms including multiple HD, online backup, archival DVD burns comprising at the very minimum triple platform redundancy of data you have been working on for years or decades that cannot be replaced.

Peace 😊

Send the Bill for the disk and your labor to Apple. 😉

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

Fourth and final realization is understanding the fragility of any and all HD & ferromagnetic storage, and that vital data needs to be “frozen” on unassailable redundancies across multiple storage platforms including multiple HD, online backup, archival DVD burns comprising at the very minimum triple platform redundancy of data you have been working on for years or decades that cannot be replaced.

Is that an offer PlotinusVeritas? Can we all backup to your secret lair of HD's

🙂

Drew Reece

Can we all backup

Online storage runs roughly $100 per year for unlimited storage. Purchase a private website with godaddy.com or likewise.

Store and protect for privacy, data on online storage, not just for protection (house fire etc), but also makes your data accessible to all people you want around the globe, but also in travel, you can access your data without packing it with you.

ultimately though DVD archival blank professional disks only hold 4.7gig of data, ..these disks are rated for 100+ years and cost $40 per 100 disks.

Most "vital" information/data is not huge media (pics/ vids/ music) and can easily be stored on DVD blanks.

Yep I like Arq, but it looks like you have pretty things & I was hoping to come visit, the UK is windy & cold at the moment 😝