Western Digital's fix - has anyone tried it?

Once corrupted the WD software will NOT FIX anything

visit the WD board, the new software is having serious "other" issues. 😊

----"until I know that this WD fix actually results in no data-loss issues"

Causation on WD drives and use of said software was BINARY.

WD software (older before the update) was acting on its own after installation before Mavericks,.. same as during Mavericks.

Though WD software has yet to be dissected by anyone here yet, ....there is no question that as per WD drive (MyBook mostly) corruption, that causation is binary (both Mavericks & WD software acting in an unknown unison to manifest the fault) regarding those with known WD drives (Mybook and otherwise) and corruption.

Said WD software (with NAS, RAID or USB/FW/ etc. HD) had no such causation on its own in use in the Mountain Lion environment.

WD admitted some 2+ weeks ago as to their part in the binary causation.

Peace

You do not need the WD software, the drive will work without it, and a potential source of trouble will be gone. Consult WD support as the removal method recommended.

This method is neither causal or binary.

Patsy, Csound is correct, always avoid the use of HD control software whenever possible. You dont need it or want it

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031

*On a very important note, always let disk utility handle a RAID array if you need one, and secondly never install any bundled software that came on your HD, or is recommended as a download from any hard drive manufacturer.

This is always a bad idea to consider installing such hard drive software designed to “improve, help etc.” your use of your new hard drive. All simple USB non-RAID hard drives need to be considered new from box as “format it immediately and ignore anything that might be on the HD from the mfg.”.

as to the original corruption, it was Binary, when people were using existing WD software with Mavericks. 😊

The WD software (with NAS, RAID or USB/FW/ etc. HD) had no such causation on its own in use in the Mountain Lion environment.

Just "dont use" bundled HD software. (or downloaded HD software)

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

as to the original corruption, it was Binary, when people were using existing WD software with Mavericks.

It is "binary" only in the sense of "involving two things," one being the older WD software & the other being OS X 10.9 Mavericks. It has nothing to do with the meaning of binary in the usual context of computing where it refers to two state logic or base 2 number systems.

And it is not a causal relationship in the strict sense either, since both the old WD software & OS 10.9 can both be present without triggering the reformat. Some other condition, a catalyst if you want to think of it that way, was required to make that happen.

There is no need to make this sound more complicated than it is. It is really pretty simple:

1. If you already have the old WD software installed, uninstall it before upgrading to Mavericks.

2. If you already have the old WD software installed & you have already upgraded to Mavericks, unmount & disconnect any & all external drives ASAP, & then uninstall the old WD software.

3. If you already have the old WD software installed & you have already upgraded to Mavericks & one or more of your external drives have been reformatted, contact WD about recovery services. DO NOT reconnect the drive(s) & do anything that would write to them because this could write over recoverable data. DO uninstall the old WD software.

4. In all cases, install the new WD software ONLY IF you need some function or feature it, & it alone, provides.

R C-R Texas, USA

It is "binary" only in the sense of "involving two things,"

Thats exactly what I meant of course. Obviously I wasnt referring to "binary data"

I like it even less complicated:

1. Dont buy WD hard drives (due to quality of consumer level build quality)

2. never ever use "bundled HD software" or same via download

3. Let Disk utility take care of RAID

4. if you have any pesky WD software, remove it, and erase it.

I think we both agree, time for both of us to eat some more turkey and stuffing. 😍

You're a day late on that turkey, but I guess you mean leftovers. Alas my wife is a vegetarian, so ... .

Re

1. Dont buy WD hard drives (due to quality of consumer level build quality)

I've used many and had no problems. But I never use their software.

Phil

w7ox

Hiya!

WD blue, red and green consumer drives arent so hot. Their black for server farms are tops of course.

Really the only thing you can get the storage gurus to agree in in most cases are that 2.5" Hitachi are the best period (I agree and have stacks of them).

I was a vegetarian for nearly 8 years to keep my girlish figure,....but no more. 😊 lol

Right now (bought bunch of them) the best 3.5" hard drives made are on "crazy" sale prices, marked Toshiba but made by Hitachi, theyre the platinum level 2TB 3.5" HD

They contain the Hitachi DT01ABA200 2TB HD

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Desktop-External-HDWC120XK3J1/dp/B008DW96NY /ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385788719&sr=8-1&keywords=toshiba+desktop+2tb

Best buy has them on sale for $79 Amazon for $89

😊

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

I like it even less complicated:

1. Dont buy WD hard drives (due to quality of consumer level build quality)

If you search the web, you will see that according to a sizable number of people, every brand of hard drive is the worst built, least reliable of all. WD just happens to be the biggest maker with the most HD's in use (including a lot of them as OEM products in Macs). All drives fail eventually; a certain percentage of them during the "infant mortality" period, but most of them last at least three years & often much longer, regardless of brand.

With so many in use, some users will have bad luck with one or more of them from one or another maker, but that doesn't mean anything statistically.

2. never ever use "bundled HD software" or same via download

Generally speaking, I agree. However, some users may need some feature that kind of software supports that nothing else does. IOW, one size does not fit all.

time for both of us to eat some more turkey and stuffing.

If I did that, I would explode! I'm still trying to digest yesterday's feast. 😁

R C-R wrote:

All drives fail eventually; a certain percentage of them during the "infant mortality"

If I did that, I would explode! I'm still trying to digest yesterday's feast. 😁

I know, I wrote that in my user tip some time ago:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031

Hard Drive Warning (all makes and models)

Ironically but logical, new hard drives are far more fragile than one that has been working for several months or a couple years. So beware in your thinking that a new hard drive translates into “extremely reliable”!

⚠ Hard drives suffer from high rates of what has been termed "infant mortality". Essentially this means new drives are highly prone to failing in the first few months of usage. This is because of very minor manufacturing defects or HD platter balancing, or head and armature geometry being less than perfect; and this is not immediately obvious and can quickly manifest itself once the drive is put to work.

Hard drives that survive the first few months of use without failing are likely to remain healthy for a number of years.

➕ Generally HD are highly prone to death or corruption for a few months, then work fine for a few years, then spike in mortality starting at 3-4 years and certainly should be considered end-of-life at 5-7+ years.

The implication of this is that you should not trust a new hard drive completely (really never completely!) until it has been working perfectly for several months.

Given the second law of thermodynamics, any and all current mfg. HD will, under perfect storage conditions tend themselves to depolarization and a point will be reached, even if the HD mechanism is perfect, that the ferromagnetic read/write surface of the platter inside the HD will entropy to the point of no return for data extraction. HD life varies, but barring mechanical failure, 3-8 years typically.

About the HD, yes, most debate it, but they havent owned 100s of of HD like myself or run server farms. The ones handling 1000s of HD know

Joe Blow who says "yeah, Ive owned 5 WD drives, theyre all fine, ...ergo WD is the best" his input on what is "best" is a small statistical sampling, of course.

I used to be anorexic, made me feel crazy, so now I eat, ..only once a day around midnight, but at least something, but no junk food. 😊 Hugs to you 😍

I dont have any turkey, so I was joking about that, no brothers or sisters family etc. I dont do any of the holidays.

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

Right now (bought bunch of them) the best 3.5" hard drives made are on "crazy" sale prices, marked Toshiba but made by Hitachi, theyre the platinum level 2TB 3.5" HD

They contain the Hitachi DT01ABA200 2TB HD

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Desktop-External-HDWC120XK3J1/dp/B008DW96NY /ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385788719&sr=8-1&keywords=toshiba+desktop+2tb

Best buy has them on sale for $79 Amazon for $89

FYI, the 3 TB version is on sale right now at Amazon for $5 less than the 2 TB one. There is no one "best" 3.5" or 2.5" HD -- each has some features that others lack -- but the 3 TB version looked like a good enough value for me to order one first thing this morning for use as a Time Machine backup. It isn't super fast, but it doesn't have to be for that use. It runs a little warmer than some of the others, but that should not be a problem.

If I was looking for a high performance external drive, right now I would get the Buffalo 3 TB DriveStation DDR. This site claims it is currently the best performer, & most other review sites concur.

Youre right, thats an INSANE price

Those contain the Hitachi DT01ABA300

$84

3TB

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Desktop-External-HDWC130XK3J1/dp/B008DW976A /ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385790177&sr=8-1&keywords=Toshiba+3TB+Canvio+Desk+Deskt op

Pounce on that (I maybe get a couple more at that price)

"There is no one "best" 3.5"

Nahh, Ive had tons of HD thru my hands those Hitachi DT01ABA300 and Hitachi DT01ABA200 are pure gold. Theyre built like bunkers I know how fragile HD are, but there are superior builds and tolerances.

Same exact HD

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-DT01ABA300-3-5-inch-6Gbps-5940rpm/dp/tech-data/B00 B0QP8C8

bare HD is $126, or same thing in enclosure is $85 😝 Ive seen that often, like that.

They will show up on DU as Hitachi, and they are Hitachi mfg. Stickers say Toshiba (Hitachi was forced to sell its 3.5" division to Toshiba while back)

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

About the HD, yes, most debate it, but they havent owned 100s of of HD like myself or run server farms.

Nevertheless, there have been no studies that actually show that any brand is statistically less likely to fail than the others, even among studies that include thousands of drives.

You also overstate in your user tip how likely a drive is to fail from infant mortality. They are not "highly likely" to fail during this period. Studies show the rate is typically no more than 3 to 5%.

And the whole section about "depolarization" & "entropy to the point of no return" is more over the top exaggeration. Yes, at least in theory, eventually the magnetic media will deteriorate to the point that data can't be read from it, but that will take many decades, not 3 to 8 years.

For example, I have drives close to about 30 years old that still have no difficulties at all reading data that was written to them when I first got them. And those drives were neither stored under anything remotely close to perfect conditions nor did they have the benefit of the improved coercivity characteristics of the coatings in more modern drives.

This is as meant "out of the LIFE of the HD, a HD has its highest likelihood for failure in the first few months"

"highly likely" period. No, of course not. lexicon

HD die in a curve......high new........drop out.......then raise at aging , you know that.

Drives that keep spinning yes, but those written to and stashed away will magnetically settle themselves whereas those being written and re-written are always magnetically refreshed.

ferromagnetic entropy is 'what it is'

http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-magnetism-and-magnetic-materials/mos t-cited-articles/

Yes, I have a few drives in the 15+ range. Those drives of yours are reading and writing.

I refer to HD written to and stashed away. (which some people do for 'security')

Your old drives are spinning and writing, static drives arent.

Me nor anyone is recommending anyone to think youll have data mostly intact on a HD written to and stashed away for 10-15+ years.

Thanks for pointing out that nuance error in the User tip however 😍 Ill fix it.

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

Those drives of yours are reading and writing.

Nope.

And there is no point in posting links to journal extracts about ferromagnetism unless you are actually going to post something that supports your contention that drives will "depolarize" in the 3 to 5 year period you claim is typical. It's like posting a link to an encyclopedia & hoping that somewhere in it maybe there is something that demonstrates you know what you are talking about, but you have no idea if there is or where to find it.

BTW, my degree is in physics & in grad school I worked for a professor grading undergrad tests. I'm very familiar with this kind of B.S. tactic, both from that & from trying (unsuccessfully) to get away with it myself in my undergrad years. 😉