Hard drive maker Western Digital is emailing customers to warn them about reported data loss issues involving OS X Mavericks and external Western Digital hard drives. Since the launch of Apple’s latest desktop operating system last week, scattered reports of data loss have popped up in various forums. Western Digital has not yet been able to verify and diagnose the issue, but believes it may have something to do with the company’s proprietary drive diagnostic and backup software, namely WD Drive Manager, WD RAID Manager, and WD SmartWare. Its email to customers, quoted below, advises that they uninstall these applications until the problem is solved.
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Dear WD Registered Customer,
As a valued WD customer we want to make you aware of new reports of Western Digital and other external HDD products experiencing data loss when updating to Apple’s OS X Mavericks (10.9). WD is urgently investigating these reports and the possible connection to the WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and WD SmartWare software applications. 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. If you have already upgraded to Mavericks, WD recommends that you remove these applications and restart your computer.
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.
Sincerely,
Western Digital
Here at the TekRevue office, we have two Western Digital external drives connected to our primary Mac, and have experienced no known data loss issues. However, we also do not utilize any of the company’s software tools. Have you experienced problems with data loss in Mavericks? Let us know!
