Typical WD
Most of the data loss problems are tied to use of WD (Western Digital) software apps for backup, RAID, etc. WD officially recommended removing these apps from your system before upgrading to 10.9. I feel like I a dodged a bullet as earlier this fall I purged all WD apps and reformatted my Costco deluxe external My Book drive with the Apple Disk Utility. Didn't know a storm was coming but I tossed the apps because they were basically crapware with chunky interface and unreliable operation. Obviously WD didn't bother to update their apps to work with 10.9.
Don't merely throw away the WD apps: dig all WD files out of application support in your library to keep things from going haywire.
Typical
This is why, a while back, I decided to avoid WD from then on
I have a WD My Passport 500GB FW drive (WDMP) that I just cannot use because it tends to go to sleep whenever it mustn't
And, to add injury to insult, it doesn't even matter whether I use FireWire (800 or 400) or USB. So it definitely isn't a FireWire issue in this case, and it also started way back when Leopard came onto the market. First, WD recommended to INSTALL the 'turbo' drivers to alleviate the issues, then their stance changed from that to UNINSTALLING the aforementioned crapware, then they just claimed that there were certain configurations they deemed 'incompatible' with their devices, and so on
What they didn't know at first (though I pointed it out to them afterwards) is that I had similar problems on ALL of my computers (or indeed other devices) that I used the WDMP with. Whether these be Windows, OS X, or *NIX operated PCs, or indeed PVRs
All showed the very same set of problems. Also, the file systems used on the WDMP didn't make any difference whatsoever. Whether I used old school FAT for Windows or the PVRs, or NTFS/HPFS, Or HFS+, or EXT2/3/4 didn't matter one single bit
The drive just didn't seem fit for purpose
I felt like I'd been duped at the time, and I could't do anything about it, because WD's warranty only covered the country in which the WDMP was originally bought, and I lived some place else
So, to me, it doesn't seem surprising at all to hear that most of the worst problems (data loss and the like) seem to affect WD drives. And especially those of users who've been using WD's own management software
It's strange, though, because WD's internal drives are still top of the range, and don't present any problems as severe as those I've had with my WDMP, or those of the users now suffering Data Loss Issues with Mavericks. I'm telling you: if the only problem with most other HDD's is that they're not spinning down/sleeping, whilst WD externals suffer from Data Loss, this makes the sleeping issues seem like child's play
And to hear WD stating that users should actually remove their software off their systems, instead of releasing an update for it, certainly doesn't improve matters. Taking all this into account surely doesn't take me off of avoiding Western Digital external drives for a long while
