i ve had 2 western digital drives fail but i have had around 4 from seagate fail but those have been in enclosures not the bare drives i ve not had any bare drive fail on me
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Western Digital Releases New Hard Drive Software After Mavericks Data Loss
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Ditto. I've used WD drives for years and never had a problem. I think it's a general rule not use to use software provided by drive manufacturers with a Mac, because they just don't care enough about Macs to be trusted with your data.
Erase and reformat
Always erase and reformat a drive before using it. Never use the software that comes with the drive but instead Quality software like superduper or Time Machine… I have had numerous (6-8) Seagate drives fail. I have had 4 Lacie drives fail (seagate inside I think). I just switched to WD drives. We will see... I have also owned six Apple laptops and five of those drives failed. Bottom line is, All drives fail sooner or later… backup, backup, backup.
Macsterguy
Always erase and reformat a drive before using it. Never use the software that comes with the drive but instead Quality software like superduper or Time Machine… I have had numerous (6-8) Seagate drives fail. I have had 4 Lacie drives fail (seagate inside I think). I just switched to WD drives. We will see... I have also owned six Apple laptops and five of those drives failed. Bottom line is, All drives fail sooner or later… backup, backup, backup.
Macsterguy
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Really??
I think Carbon Copy Cloner is a great piece of software, so not knocking it at all. (The author lived in the same city I grew up in too!)
But it's really for a different purpose than Apple's Time Machine. I have a NAS on my local network at home, for example, and all of the Macs in the house back up via Time Machine, centrally, to the NAS server. The NAS, in turn, has a RAID drive array in it so a failure of any one drive won't cause any data loss.
CCC is more suitable for grabbing an exact image of a system for the purpose of replacing a boot drive with a new one and slapping the image back down on it again, or imaging multiple Macs with a "base" image of applications and settings you want all of them to share.
I think Carbon Copy Cloner is a great piece of software, so not knocking it at all. (The author lived in the same city I grew up in too!)
But it's really for a different purpose than Apple's Time Machine. I have a NAS on my local network at home, for example, and all of the Macs in the house back up via Time Machine, centrally, to the NAS server. The NAS, in turn, has a RAID drive array in it so a failure of any one drive won't cause any data loss.
CCC is more suitable for grabbing an exact image of a system for the purpose of replacing a boot drive with a new one and slapping the image back down on it again, or imaging multiple Macs with a "base" image of applications and settings you want all of them to share.
I've seen every brand of HD fail a bunch, but the worst has to be Toshiba. These days I care less about the brand I buy and make sure that it's all well backed up, locally and in the cloud.
What about internal SATA II drives? After developer testing, the first GM install coincidentally crashed two of my four Mac Pro SATA's. I thought nothing of it at the time, until more threads appeared regarding external and internal drives.
I noticed this occurs on volumes greater than 2TB as Mac Pro's "Disk Utility" formats anything larger as a "Logic Volume" and not "Journaled HFS+". The work around is to mount the drive in an external bay, format it using "Disk Utility", shut down, mount, boot, and OS X [magically] recognizes it as a 3TB journaled HFS volume.
Thankfully WD has great customer service and replaced both drives with no hoops on my end.
I noticed this occurs on volumes greater than 2TB as Mac Pro's "Disk Utility" formats anything larger as a "Logic Volume" and not "Journaled HFS+". The work around is to mount the drive in an external bay, format it using "Disk Utility", shut down, mount, boot, and OS X [magically] recognizes it as a 3TB journaled HFS volume.
Thankfully WD has great customer service and replaced both drives with no hoops on my end.
Don't bet on that. The very software in question in this thread, not to mention Apple's own little Mountain Lion "sleep" bug screwed quite a few RAID arrays in the past year, leaving the owners HOSED beyond all recognition. That can't happen with a CCC volume that isn't even attached (and in the Windows world not being attached means no chance of infection). One can always plug a CCC volume in to restore a program that gets hosed without having to restore the entire volume (it just mounts as a regular file drive, after all).
In fact, I personally see no use for Time Machine AT ALL and have never used it even once. Why would I need 50 copies of the same program? Why on earth would I need backups every single hour for the rest of my life? That's got to affect system performance in a negative way. You could NEVER play an intense game since it's going to be constantly backing up. That alone is why I never used it. There are NO controls to set backup times to when you're not using the computer, etc. It's just awful. It's for people that don't know how to work something like CCC on their own. But then I have to wonder if those same people will be able to restore something when it goes wrong since it's much simpler to backup with Time Machine than to restore.
CCC does have options to archive older files and you can schedule it (at your leisure, not Apple's) to backup as often as you want if you prefer to keep a backup drive connected. I simply see no advantage to Time Machine other than it's automatic for people that don't know how to use a computer.
I've had my PPC machine get hosed before with an error that made it unbootable. I just calmly booted off my external CCC backup and then copied back to the internal with CCC and then rebooted and removed the external drive. It was simplicity in itself and had no lengthy re-install OS times + restore. It just copied itself and i was done and back where I left off on the last backup. Yeah, you could lose stuff if you don't backup very often, but that's a scheduling issue not an application issue.
Uhm... if you read WD's support doc, or the MR article, the issue that was causing the data loss with Mavericks was fixed.
As happens in most of these situations, there are always edge cases where people insist their problem is related, but the true cause of the issue tends to be something else. Overwhelmingly, the available data shows the problem is that people installed WD's bloatware, and it didn't interact well with the new OS version, causing data loss.
The REAL fix here is avoid using the software unless you absolutely must to set up the RAID on an external enclosure, and even then remove the software when no longer needed.
If you have 15TB of data, and it's that valuable to you, then you should not be relying on a single storage instance to store all of your media. You should have one on-site and one off-site backup. That way, if the on-site experienced data loss use to say, a bad interaction between poorly-written bloatware and a new OS version, you'd still have an undisturbed off-site instance where the data is safe.
There are plenty of ways to do this. Cloud services are one. Buying more hard drives (preferably a different vendor from what you're using now), copying your data and storing them at a friend or family member's house is another.
Too expensive, you say? Well, how expensive is losing your data?
I'm sure Apple an WD are both quaking' in their boots at this declaration.
Realistically, this release is all you're getting. So, you'll probably be staying on 10.8 for a long while. Meanwhile, an opportunity is being missed to take a more rational approach at protecting your data, preferably one that involves some geographic diversity, perhaps even cloud storage or other media types as a secondary alternative. Because if your data is THAT vulnerable that something like this could wipe it out, I guarantee you that staying on 10.8 alone will not secure it against similar problems down the road. And having been warned, you'll only have yourself to blame.
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This makes it pretty evident that you don't have an understanding of how Time Machine works. You don't see a use for it and you prefer CCC. That's fine, your preference is something your'e entitled to. But Time Machine does not make 50 copies of the same program, or any other file, UNLESS you've managed to change the program or file 50 times (which rarely happens to a majority of the file system). Nor does its backup methods affect system performance any more negatively than CCC would.
It also doesn't store "backups every hour for the rest of [your] life," though many who have taken advantage of the rolling time period that it DOES store hourly backups can find it to be a pretty powerful thing, particularly if you're working on a large project, and the file got botched due to user error or other issue. Between the options of losing only an hour of work as opposed to weeks of work, most will pick the former.
Again, you're entitled to your opinion and preferences, but your perception of Time Machine is factually flawed.
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Hitachi is the best
Though I say that with only 8 hard drives of experience, not 40 or more like a server operator.
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You should also learn that you HAVE to use the software in order to use WD's RAID systems on their drives, for some of them have hardware RAID. I have one sitting behind my computer that's been (fortunately) disconnected.
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Time Machine can restore from a backup made before an OS upgrade very easily. Easier to use than CCC. But I still use CCC for cloning.
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Hitachi? I've never seen a Hitachi fail, and they're cheaper than WD! The WD drive in my 2006 iMac died after 5 years of usage.
I had bad Hitachi (and IBM) HDDs. WD Green (2 TB) and Scorpio Blue (1 TB) run here flawless (i think > 2 years). Very silent and reliable.
And this was not a hardware related problem. It was just add-on software from WD, which caused the data loss under 10.9.x.
Wow. I must be lucky. I've got a WD drive (over 6 yes old) a LaCie (over 6 Yeats old( and a Toshiba (about 4 yes old). No issues with any of them!
It's been now 1month and 2days and my 2012 mba sits while waiting for the hard drive to be replaced after the toshiba hard drive failure(all the data have been lost). They're saying the drives are out of stock in the country(UK)
My two 2TB WD drives are great. I use them as scratch disks for entertainment media. I haven't plugged them in since updating to Mavs though. Does this mean I should install their software before I do or does this not pertain to me?
Not sure why [as I never installed any of the WD software except their firmware updater], but the WD MyBook keeps disconnecting from my Mac Mini. Both are connected to a UPS, so it shouldn't be power fluctuations and the cables aren't being brushed against. It may or may not remount automatically [if not, it does after a restart].
Lame.
Lame.
From watching CCC, it doesn't seem to take much to alter a file to be tagged for backup (time stamp change, for example which apparently can change just by accessing a file as in "Date Last Opened" gets recorded, which modifies the file). It might not affect system performance any more often than CCC would while they're running, but CCC does not automatically run itself every single hour like Time Machine does (which is not adjustable without 3rd party additions) because Apple thinks we're too darn stupid to set our own backup schedules. And like I said, having the system do backup analysis and file moving every hour is going to affect system performance. You may not notice it browsing, but you will probably notice it if you're playing Call of Duty Ghost Ops or something.
I don't think it is. I think I have quite valid points. Apple could address a lot of those problems by simply offering some OPTIONS as to when/how often backups occur. This would get rid of most of my complaints. I still wouldn't have a simple bootable backup for when things go awry, however. Plus Time Machine requires the backup drive to be connected at all times. If something like that sleep bug in Mountain Lion occurred, there is potential for it to wreck both devices (and certainly with Windows, there are malware threats) and thus IMO leaving a backup device connected is a bad idea unless you have a second backup device for such potential emergencies and that's more money to outlay.
I'm sure there are people that do kinds of work that might require hourly backups and these people probably don't ever play games on their Mac, etc., but it's that one size fits all attitude from Apple that I don't like. Offering options to control Time Machine would go a long way to convincing me it's a worthwhile backup program. As it is, I'll stick with CCC.
I've had many WD drives and they all work flawlessly. I have a few Caviar Black's in my current PC and I use the WD 3TB Red drives in my NAS. I'm a very happy WD customer.
I've never installed any vendor's optional software. ever. The add-on software tends to be very buggy and unstable.
...and there's the main issue: you're basing your assumptions on how a completely different piece of software works.
And the other issue is that you presume to know other peoples use cases, mine included.
As I've said, you have an opinion you're entitled to, but the factual points you attempt to make are not fully vetted.
Anyway, it's good that CCC works for you.
Indeed. I've too have had tons of HDD's since the mid-80's, including even the first 5M HDD from Seagate, the ST-506.
I've found all brands to be equal, reliability-wise. ALL brands are common in that their 500G/1TB 12mm drives generally have died after a year in my Macbook Pros (incl. my 17" one), for example (fortunateky, SSD saved the day - I've no problems with the Vertex 4). WD hasn't turned to be significantly worse than the rest.
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No problems here with external 4TB HDD's in a FireWire 800 enclosure. Formatted to exFat by 10'8's Disk Utility.
The Time Machine volume is offered as a boot option if you hold ALT while rebooting. Seems pretty simple to me. You have apparently made a good decision for you in choosing CCC over Time Machine. It would be a mistake to draw the conclusion that your decision is the best for everyone. They have different uses you don't need what Time Machine offers, so you use something else. Others do need it and they are the ones who use it.
Same here. I use both. Time Machine runs all the time, backing up the internal 1.1TB Fusion drive and 1TB external working drive to a 4TB external drive. It's only once in a blue moon that I notice it working that it interferes with something that I am doing. In those rare cases, I just select skip this backup.
CCC I use to clone both working drives to separate partitions on two 2TB drives that I (in ideal circumstances) rotate and update every couple of weekends. I consider those my real backups, but those are subject to human (my) failure and can easily get two weeks of date.