Mountain Lion to Mavericks - Safe to upgrade now?

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Level 1

13 points

Mountain Lion to Mavericks - Safe to upgrade now?

I have two machines running Mountain Lion. I would like to update them to Mavericks.

I have several external drives, some of which are western digital drives (MyBook and Essentials). I'm concerned about the upgrade to Mavericks given the problems people have had with the WD drives. My backup drives are not WD.

What's the best way to test the drives to make sure I won't lose data after the system update? I do not know if they were formatted using the WD software. probably not, but I would like to know for certain.

Can someone outline exactly how I should proceed?

OS X Mountain Lion (10.8)

Posted on Jul 25, 2014 11:15 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

684,105 points

Jul 26, 2014 2:41 PM in response to bigdaddy999

One option is to create a new partition (~30- 50 GB), install Mavericks, and ‘test drive’ it. If you like/don’t like it it, you can then remove the partition. Do a backup before you do anything.

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Answer 2

Jul 26, 2014 2:55 PM in response to bigdaddy999

Just go ahead and update. It's only software and any software or hardware for that matter can go wonkey without any warning. If it does then I start all over again.

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Answer 3

Jul 26, 2014 6:07 PM in response to bigdaddy999

Clone your drives first. Both of these applications can be used to create a clone. Time Machine is great for backing up your data but it's not bootable. A clone is bootable and easy to revert.

SuperDuper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/

CCC http://www.bombich.com/download.html

After you have safely backed up as a clone you can upgrade your machines or do a clean install of Mavericks. If you don't like Mavericks, it's easy to revert to your clone backup.

Also as Eric mentioned you can create a small partition for testing Mavericks if you have enough free disk space. A 30GB partition would allow you to test out your network, printers, scanners.

Do you have software that will not run under Mavericks? See this site to check for compatibility:

http://roaringapps.com/

Create an OS X Mavericks Partition

http://www.needhelp4mac.com/2014/06/create-an-os-x-mavericks-partition/

**(Fair disclosure: NeedHelp4Mac is my site. I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.)

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Answer 4

John Galt

Level 10

141,628 points

Jul 27, 2014 7:47 AM in response to bigdaddy999

The problems reported were the direct result of using Western Digital's "SmartWare" or "Drive Utility" software. If you have anything fitting that description, uninstall it and ensure all its remnants are completely eradicated from your systems prior to upgrading to Mavericks.

I have a variety of Western Digital hard disk drives, internal and external, in use as boot volumes as well as Time Machine backup destinations. None of them were affected by any Mavericks release, but I do not use any third party hard disk drive utilities.

The very first thing you should do with a new or replacement hard disk is to erase it with Disk Utility, thereby erasing any of the garbage apps that typically ship with them. That includes any "drive utility" software regardless of its manufacturer. They're not required and can only cause problems.

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Answer 5

bigdaddy999 Author

Level 1

13 points

Sep 9, 2014 11:40 AM in response to John Galt

Thanks all. Meant to check back on this a while ago, but have had other things get in the way of this project.

The key for me is whether or not the data on the WD is affected by the mavericks issue. I cannot afford to lose this data, and of course it's now backed up on a couple of WD drives. Figures. So is there any way to determine if they were formatted using the WD software via a Mountain Lion-based Mac? What specifically should I look for? I assume that I cannot reformat the drives under GUID with the data in place and don't currently have enough space to rotate copies off a WD-formatted drive, if that's what I have. Generally I've ignored any vendor software, but I don't want to make a mistake here.

Cloning - great idea. I could always replace the system. But the real concern is the data on the WD drives that would be attached to an updated mac. Those are the ones I am most concerned with. I could clone those as well before starting to ensure that I have a copy but wouldn't cloning also copy any WD issues?

Perhaps the safest route is to get another external drive or two to be safe (Non-WD and COPY the data to avoid cloning the incompatibility problem).

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Answer 6

John Galt

Level 10

141,628 points

Sep 9, 2014 4:56 PM in response to bigdaddy999

To my knowledge if you are using Western Digital's "SmartWare" one or more of the following Launch Daemons will be present:

com.wdc.WDDMservice.plist

com.wdc.WDSmartWareServer.plist

com.westerndigital.WD-SmartWare-Installer.plist

To determine if they are present, use the Finder's Go menu and select Go to Folder...

Copy (drag to select the entire line below) and paste the following in that field:

/Library/LaunchDaemons

A Finder window will open with the contents of that folder. It may be completely empty. If any of the above Western Digital files appear though, then you are using the problematic utilities. In that event write back for instructions. If they do not appear, then you're probably OK.

The following may be also installed in Applications

WDSmartWareD

If it is present, uninstall it by following Western Digital's instructions.

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Answer 7

bigdaddy999 Author

Level 1

13 points

Sep 9, 2014 5:27 PM in response to John Galt

Thanks, John. I"ll check that out. But these are external drives. is searching for this software on the computer's drive as you describe going to tell me about the external drive's formatting? Or would these be present if those drives were EVER formatted with the WD utilities? I assume I should connect the drives to the mountain lion machine to do this test?

Hope my question makes sense.

Thanks.

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Answer 8

bigdaddy999 Author

Level 1

13 points

Sep 9, 2014 5:33 PM in response to bigdaddy999

Ok - checked on the two macs - none of those things were present, and those drives have been connected to this machine in the past when I moved the data to them. Can the problem be sourced/residing on the drive itself? or when formatting the drives originally does the computer end up with the software signatures you mention above? Sorry if this is a dumb question!

Thank you.

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Answer 9

John Galt

Level 10

141,628 points

Sep 9, 2014 5:47 PM in response to bigdaddy999

... Can the problem be sourced/residing on the drive itself?

Not to my knowledge. However, I agree the safest course of action is to copy your essential documents to a volume known to have been formatted with Disk Utility as you proposed, since that is known to be a prerequisite for using any hard disk drive with a Mac.

I don't know if there is any other way to format them, but if there is, I wouldn't rely upon it.

The drive's manufacturer, e.g Western Digital or not, is of no consequence.

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Answer 10

Sep 10, 2014 1:21 AM in response to bigdaddy999

I would also like to add that you should make sure all

your applications are up to date and are compatible with

Mavericks.

Also, if you have any third party hardware, make sure all drivers are

up to date and are Mavericks compatible.

Also, in addition to the drive utilities already mentioned, remove

any apps or extensions that are touted as "performance enhancers",

haxies, or any other system tweaks as they almost always break

things when doing OS version upgrades.

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