External Hard drives wiped: 'MyBook' and 'EFI'

I had this problem years ago.

First, make a complete backup on a new drive (better two).

Then find the old WD software which caused the problem and remove it.

Here are some threads with details:

• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5475136

• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5475611?answerId=23505869022#23505869022

• http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/External-Drives-for-Mac-Exper iencing-Data-Loss-with-Maverick-OS/td-p/613775/

• https://community.wd.com/t/all-data-gone-on-my-book-studio-ii/20534

• https://community.wd.com/t/wd-kill-my-my-book-studio/20624

Good luck!

I had yesterday the same problem. My Toshiba 3T this morning is wiped and EFI and MYBOOK is on my desktop.

I have WD Mycloud.I don't know how to recover my 3T.

This morning I initialise PRAM of my mybookpro before I connect my Toshiba.

Thanks a lot for your answers.

I have MacBook Pro with Sierra 10.12.6 and 3 Toshiba canvio 2x2T an 1x3T with Hfs+

What is funny is that my time machine is on Toshiba 2T and there were no problems.

My "Apple Photos libraries" were on 3T and 2T are both erased with the names of "My book". 25000 pictures has been erased. I am lucky , I had copies of my pictures. I have to create news photos libraries wasting my time.

In the meantime I have removed all wd software as well as wd cloud.

When I am looking with W10 on my Toshiba canvio, I see that Efi and my datas are there.

I am not sure if there is a manner to rebuilt my hard disk.

I am experiencing this problem right now too.

Would doing a fresh reinstall of the OS and used programs help?

If I were to plug the corrupted hard drives to another Mac that does not have this problem, will that computer have the problem too?

Final question, would erasing the corrupted drives and creating new partitions fix them? Or should I just trash them and not risk anything?

I already have backups and would like to be able to still use those hard drives again.

1. Drives will work fine in any other Mac that dues not have the new HDD format and Sierra on it

2. Reinstalling did not do a thing, as it is the mix of Sierra and the new HDD formatting from Apple that causes the problem.

I have write dropouts on external drives after a while and have to through them ouy and reconnect to be able to write on them.

3. Your external drive are not corrupt. See 2.

Thank you very much. If I reinstall back to El Capitan, will I be okay? I still have that installer.

So it is Sierra that is part of the problem? Are there any types or brands of HDD that is immune to this problem? Thank you.

Hi

> I have never used any WD software

It seems you have, because there is no OS app which can rename a drive to "Mybook".

> I also checked in application support folders

WD software isn't so easy to find. Search in this forum for "EtreCheck" and WD.

This will help you finding out WHERE the WD software is and how to delete it.

Good luck!

Issue:

After Reboot of my iMac two drives named MyBook and two drives named EFI where on my desktop. Missing was: PegasusHaven and ArtBackup. One set of MyBook and EFI had the logo on it from my Pegasus R8 and the other set from my Seagate external USB3 drive (standard Drive Icons from apple).

I shut down again everything and rebooted. After that there where only the two MyBook drives on my desktop.

Both drives still had their capacity but where "completely empty" as they where formatted.

I bought a new iMac a couple of weeks ago, and this week I installed WD Drive Utilities that I downloaded from their webpage. As I needed to reconfigure a My Passport Pro Thunderbold Raid. After that all was fine, and I do not turn off my computer often. After a couple of days, working on my Pegasus Drive all the time, I shut the iMac down, next day booting the issue appeared.

OS X 10.11

Promise Pegases R8 2 RAID - Thunderbolt - 32TB, RAID 06, 24TB capacity - Original Drive-Name: PromiseHaven

After reboot: MyBook and EFI, and 24TB as before on MyBook, but empty. All files gone.

Issue from WD Drive Utility Software after online research. I am not the only one. WD support talked to me as they never heard of it. Also saying they do not support other brand drives. (Of course not, and starting WD Drive Utility only shows you WD Drives, so you actually can not access other drives)

So does anyone know what happened and what is best to do to get back my files?

A couple of Production on it. Form which are about 7TB of Data that are more than important.

Thank you!

(Uninstalled the WD Drive Utility and am running Data Rescue 4 at the moment: Will take 3 Days, will report)

If you had no backups, then you'll want to discuss this problem with a data recovery service.

I'd generally recommend getting a disk image prior to attempting any recovery, as — without that — you only get one shot at recovering the files.

I'd probably also be looking for a discussion or two with WD, too.

Maybe also discuss this with Apple support, as — if this was really was the WD software — then it's certainly acting much like some rather nasty malware, even if that was not intentional.

FWIW, with OS X or most other operating systems, there's no need for add-on software for an external USB disk.

WD claims it has nothing to do with them. But searching the internet tells me it is their software that does it.

I wonder what they have done in their software to allow them to delet folder-structures of drives that are non-WD.

This is not understandable, and it is really like a bad virus/malware.

Wonder if they can be sued because of this?! It did this with all "non-WD" drives on my computer except Net-Work-Drives...

Some previous and possibly-related threads...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5475136?start=330&tstart=0

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

FWIW, for basic operations with most USB storage devices, add-on OS X software is not required.

If your data does get clobbered somehow, make a sector-level copy of the entire disk with the "lost" data before attempting any recovery. This will give you more than one chance to recover anything left on the disk, where an incomplete or failed repair pass might end up being data-destructive. This whether it's the WD software involved here or not — I don't know — or some OS X bug or some other device or USB issue, or cases where a user command error — most of us have deleted data that we hadn't intended to — can certainly also clobber data.

Have data backups, too. Disks inevitably fail, computers inevitably fail, software fails and sometimes at the worst possible moment, and we users can and do make mistakes.

Just my two cents worth, but the first thing I do with an external drive is go to disk utilities and Partition, not erase, the drive.

This completely wipes any factory installed software and puts down a clean partition.

I had the same problem this morning...

2 week ago, in first my WD Studio Duo 4to had the same problem (EFI + Mybook), 1 week after, with a disk WD Green 2To plug in a dock USB, this morning with my Pegasus R2+ 3To... So the problem is mac or a software/malware? It's crazy!!!! any solution? only recovery software or a specialise firm?

Thanks for your help!

I precise i have a Macbook Pro Retina 15p last 2013 and i was on Yosemite before the crash.

Could be a busted application, could be broken add-on code, could be a bug on OS X, could be some other error, could be somebody else with access to this computer and malicious inclinations, could be some other problem...

Yes, you can try your own data recovery, or can contact a firm. Before you try any of the open-source or commercial add-on or third-party providers, get a complete sector-by-sector ("raw") copy of the disk first, as that will allow you to reload the device and try again if the particular tool fails. If you don't make a backup of the corrupt disk, you get one chance.

I have been burned by add-on device-support software, and learned to avoid it in preference to the vendor device support, where I could manage that. Hardware widgets that need add-on vendor software ties you to that add-on software, and some vendors can abandon those add-ons rather more quickly than the hardware might otherwise remain useful.

Data that's not sufficiently backed up always and eventually seems to find a way to become lost, unfortunately. Either corruptions or accidents or command errors or malicious deletion or theft or damage... The results are the same...