Western Digital Warns External Hard Drive Customers Over Mavericks Data Loss

[LordVic]

Doesn't matter. APIs change for a reason, and therefore isn't Apple's fault, but WD's for not staying up to date with Mavericks and API changes.

that depends.

is WD claiming that their software is supported and compatible with OSx Mavericks?

or are people just using the software, and assuming that because it worked for ML, it'll work for Mavericks?

it its the 2nd, and people are assuming, than it's their own damn fault. if the product literature doesn't explicitly say "Mavericks" or "10.9" on its compatibility ilist, it is actually neither Apples nor WD's fault in the matter, but the user for not ensuring their using the appropriate software.

 

[dysamoria]

that's because your smart. Like me.

*you're.

----------

that depends.

is WD claiming that their software is supported and compatible with OSx Mavericks?

or are people just using the software, and assuming that because it worked for ML, it'll work for Mavericks?

it its the 2nd, and people are assuming, than it's their own damn fault. if the product literature doesn't explicitly say "Mavericks" or "10.9" on its compatibility ilist, it is actually neither Apples nor WD's fault in the matter, but the user for not ensuring their using the appropriate software.

It's an entirely understandable end user assumption to assume that what works now will continue to work after a free OS upgrade. Anything else is specialist knowledge that end users shouldn't be expected to obsess over like we tech people do. The burden is on the developers here.

 

[JHankwitz]

Wow MR. congrats on the worlds most sensationalist headline.

Right. It appears that the hard drives with related software are loosing the data, not Maverick.

 

[rdlink]

I guess I'm glad that I've never, ever, used HDD manufacturer software before. I've always let the OS (OS X and Windows) manage the drives.

Exactly. All of that crap is proprietary, and unnecessary junk

 

[JHankwitz]

I guess I won't be upgrading my 2010 MacBook yet. I use two 2GB WD Drives for iTunes and both are full of TV shows and movies.

I got this warning in my email yesterday.

Should be OK if you're not using the WD Crapware to run them as stated in the article.

 

[cclloyd]

i'm glad i don't ever use the garbage software that comes with these hard drives anyway.

The seagate NTFS driver that came on my hard drive was from 2003. Outdated much?

 

[JackieInCo]

Should be OK if you're not using the WD Crapware to run them as stated in the article.

I just found the smartware uninstaller and have removed it. I didn't know there was a way to remove it till now.

 

[tech4all]

just download your backup copy form the NSA

That made me lol

More reasons why WD SUCKS!

Avoid 'em like the plague.

Been using WD for years and an external since earlier last year. No problems (not using the WD software).

 

[rdlink]

You need the WD drive manager to config the various raid modes on some units. That's why you HAVE to use it.

Then you should buy a piece of hardware that uses standard RAID configurations.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Is Apple's continuing trend to break existing software with every release of OS X.

I mean one could argue that WD should have offered updated software that works with Mavericks, but the problem is this case who really is pro-active making sure pre-existing software is compatible with a new OS version.

WD software worked fine pre-Mavericks, and obviously Apple changes something that breaks that software. This should not be tolerated by an OS vendor, and in fact this has not been a significant issue on Windows for years now. Since pretty much XP Microsoft stop the process of always expecting software vendors to have to make OS specific adjustments to their software pre or post OS release.

I know Apple wants to always be bleeding edge, and the changes made probably optimizes disk I/O at some level, but you just cant randomly change kernel, driver and SDK at will every time you update your OS and Apple has to start respecting developers by stopping this constant need to change everything under the hood and then having every software vendor have to deal with the aftermath months after a release.

There's a great article floating around the internet about how Windows 95 engineers had to analyze the Sim City exe to determine what it was doing, and wrote a patch so that it would work on Windows 95.

Found it here

I first heard about this from one of the developers of the hit game SimCity, who told me that there was a critical bug in his application: it used memory right after freeing it, a major no-no that happened to work OK on DOS but would not work under Windows where memory that is freed is likely to be snatched up by another running application right away. The testers on the Windows team were going through various popular applications, testing them to make sure they worked OK, but SimCity kept crashing. They reported this to the Windows developers, who disassembled SimCity, stepped through it in a debugger, found the bug, and added special code that checked if SimCity was running, and if it did, ran the memory allocator in a special mode in which you could still use memory after freeing it.

 

[TMoS]

And thats why I'll never be the first to upgrade to any OS.

Burn the bridges, it encurages the troops!

 

[apakatt]

The mavericks upgrade corrupted both my 1 TB WD discs but I do NOT have ANY WD software installed. It is so enormously frustrating reading comment after comment blaming WD software. Sure, there might be several problems but it doesn't help me.

From the threads I've read it looks like the discs contains Apples typical partitions (EFI / BOOT OS X). A change like this doesn't need to affect all but everyone but for me, and others who uses raid, this screws everything.

What I've found so far, my problems seem to indicate some fault in the OS X installer.

 

[jkichline]

How long?

How long did Western Digital have to test, develop and update drivers for Mavericks? It was released in June to developers. It sounds like WD didn't have their crap together.

 

[charlituna]

I guess I'm glad that I've never, ever, used HDD manufacturer software before. I've always let the OS (OS X and Windows) manage the drives.

yep.

I stopped using WD drives a while ago because I had too many failures with them and their customer service at the time was a joke.

But now i'm really glad. it is unacceptable that this wasn't discovered until after the public release given the software has been available for months. I can't believe WD was so dumb and/or lazy/greedy not to pay for a developer's account to test it before launch (although sometimes tells me that they wouldn't have to pay anything so that makes it worse)

 

[TJH133]

So this is only happens if you use their software on Mavericks to access the hard drives?

So not a Mavericks flaw but WD's? Or maybe both, but because WD writes software for the Mac, they should've been accessing developer builds of Mavericks and would've found this out long ago.

chances are it is a apple bug in how they changed how their API work. WD job to fix it but chances are Apple screw them over.

Apple has a long history of screwing developers with changes and screwing backwards compatibility

 

[chrisdazzo]

Precisely why you never use the useless garbage-ware included with any external drive. Always wipe it and start fresh.

 

[TJH133]

How long did Western Digital have to test, develop and update drivers for Mavericks? It was released in June to developers. It sounds like WD didn't have their crap together.

Umm 3-4 months is not much time in development cycles. You release in June. The company MIGHT look at it maybe one month.
It should be safe to assume most of the time that existing stuff will not break. Also by the sound of this it is a very limited number of people making it hard to track down and might not happen in internal testing.

During that time chances are they were working on the next version. After that version they would go back and update to the next OS.

Bigger the product the slower the boat turns.

 

[dwmreg]

WD Software Was Always Lame Anyhow

WD has always bundled some really lame and really outdated software with their drives. The software is seldom if ever updated. It languishes and sits around. That is why I bought my first non-WD drive in a long time. I even reached out to them today and I still haven't had a call back yet. They don't care!!

They make fairly good hardware, but suck at the software part.

 

[JHankwitz]

I know Apple wants to always be bleeding edge, and the changes made probably optimizes disk I/O at some level, but you just cant randomly change kernel, driver and SDK at will every time you update your OS and Apple has to start respecting developers by stopping this constant need to change everything under the hood and then having every software vendor have to deal with the aftermath months after a release.

Right, they should continue innovating and being the technology leader, but don't make changes. Apple had Maverick out for Beta testing for many months. Developers need to perform appropriate testing if they want to stay in the game. WD failed and deserve all the bad press. Unfortunately, headlines are being written to make it look like it's Apple's fault because it draws readership, resulting in more $$$$.

 

[TJH133]

Right, they should continue innovating and being the technology leader, but don't make changes. Apple had Maverick out for Beta testing for many months. Developers need to perform appropriate testing if they want to stay in the game. WD failed and deserve all the bad press. Unfortunately, headlines are being written to make it look like it's Apple's fault because it draws readership, resulting in more $$$$.

months is not much development time.
Also it is generrally a waste of resource to develop new stuff on a beta anything. You know developing for a beta product you run the risk of tons of work being wiped out. Gold master is really as soon as you can look at it.

End of the day Apple treats developers like crap. MS is much kinder to devs.

Development cyclings are a lot longer. 6 months is consider fast for big things. Often times a minor update you should not expect stuff to break.

 

[brianvictor7]

just download your backup copy form the NSA.

----------



yup.. yup...

Best "Pure Awesome" comment of the day!

 

[charlituna]

Best solution is to get with the times and stop using spinning hard drives.

if SSDs weren't so dang expensive and small more folks would.

My boss requires us to have two storage bays, one for working and one as a full mirror backup. i would love to have a pair of mirrored storage systems on swappable SSDs but i need 100s of TBs of info for each project and right now you can't get that in SSD without blowing your budget. Especially if you want access to newer connection tech like thunderbolt

 

[vmachiel]

That's why:

1) buy drive
2) erase and reformate drive
3) use drive.

 

[cppguy]

Best solution is to get with the times and stop using spinning hard drives.

No, the problem is not with the drives, but with their software. You may lose data even with an SSD, as long as you use their software.

 

[impulse462]

Best solution is to get with the times and stop using spinning hard drives.

When I can get a relatively cheap thunderbolt SSD at 1TB i will.