OS X Mavericks wipes data on Western Digital drives

Nicole Kobie November 4, 2013

Western Digital has warned users not to upgrade to Mac OS X Mavericks after some external drives were wiped clean of data.

OS X Mavericks wipes data on Western Digital drives

The problem appears to be a conflict between Mavericks and Western Digital’s own management software.

On Western Digital’s and Apple’s support forums, users reported entire drives being wiped clean.

“I have just lost 10TB of data,” said one. “All the contents of a 6TB WD and a 4TB Seagate drives have been wiped out. Both HDs have been renamed ‘MyBook’.”

As one forum poster noted, Western Digital had been previously warned of problems by users testing the beta of Mavericks, well before the OS was released. The first post on the subject was made on 7 October.

“It’s shocking that they have been made aware of this issue well in advance of the public Mavericks release and still proceeded without any warning to their customers,” the post said.

In an email sent to users, Western Digital warned users about upgrading and said it was working on a solution.

“WD is urgently investigating these reports and the possible connection to the WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and WD SmartWare software applications,” the company said. “Until the issue is understood and the cause identified, WD strongly urges our customers to uninstall these software applications before updating to OS X Mavericks (10.9), or delay upgrading.”

“The WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager, and WD SmartWare software applications are not new and have been available from WD for many years, however solely as a precaution WD has removed these applications from our website as we investigate this issue,” it added.

If you’ve already upgraded to Mavericks, Western Digital recommends that you remove the affected applications and restart your computer to avoid data loss.