Rant!

After skimming through the posts
In this forum and the ridiculous replies given by the WD staff I’ve got to say my piece.

People here are posting about not being able to use their HDD’s in that most likely hold extremely important data for fear of the drive automatically formatting itself. Answers like ‘it will work with older versions of OSX’ are a bit of a kick in the teeth don’t you think? It’s not like it’s a straightforward job to downgrade or create a dual boot for your OS.

Answers like the above finished with, ‘sincere apologies for the grave inconvenience, tarnished confidence in our product and probable loss of data’ might be a little more befitting. Is this situation somehow deemed acceptable to you guys cus IT AINT TO ME!

I have 4 mybook studio II’s - 1 which formatted and the other 3 unplugged because I really cannot afford to lose or disrupt that data. WHERE IS THE ETA ON FIXING THE PROBLEM?!? WHEN WILL I BE ABLE TO PLUG MY DRIVES BACK IN AND GET BACK TO WORK? WHERE IS THE APOLOGY?!? EXPLAIN WHY THIS HAPPENED, WHY WERE YOU NOT MAVERICKS COMPLIANT?

OSX developers edition went through how many revisions? Did anyone even check this? By your own admission the software was old… WD are taking the responsibility of holding a lot of extremely important data very lightly and now we are suffering the consequences.

You have provided data recovery software I will give you that, but it is impossible to restructure the files in the way that were before data loss. A neat and tidy timeline of photographic memories have been lost and I will never be able to correct that, we are talking thousands of photos. so much of my valuable time has been wasted.

There are people out there who I am sure have lost a lot more than me, I think you need to recognise and acknowledge them and make an apology, not just some **bleep** IT support answer telling people to downgrade their macs and muddle through vast amounts of recovered data lacking any order whatsoever.

we have to sit and wait like idiots to able to use/access our data while the programmers arise from their unproductive slumber rehash together a new version of WD drive manager which we have no confidence in. I invested in raid because I thought it would be sufficient. My paranoia has got me planning back ups of back ups of back ups now.

Thanks.

1 Like

You are absolutely right.  This is a disaster for lots of people and there is no light at the end of this tunnel.  The total harm caused by this disaster will be very large – devastating for some who put their most valuable digital assets on the drives --without regard to whoever ends up bearing the responsibiliby.  WD’s email to registered users was certainly written more by their general counsel than by the tech people, and its purpose is to try to put a lid on their liability.  I only regret that you called your very sensible response a rant.  It would not be very different at all if it were given a more polite title, like “Observations on recent events.”

Haha agreed. I was seething at the time unfortunately. WD boffs are keeping quiet I see.

It sounds like you had these drives before the new OS came out.  Any time a new OS comes out hardware problems come up. The OS makers don’t make sure on backward compatibility of hardware and software. Maybe some of your anger should be directed at Apple for not testing enough with old hardware.

Joe

I also have read the WD forums and put my 2 cents in. Si-guy, as another forum member stated, you are not ranting. In 2003 I lost all my 40 years of photography when my home burned down in a severe Southern California event, The Cedar Fire. My backups at that time were cd-roms in photo safes. The safes simply melted away. That was sad, but I was not angry.

That said, I am very angry with WD. Apple releasing a new OS should be a big deal to WD. WD, you need to answer si-guy! So until WD admits that they were asleep at the wheel and makes some reasonable effort to compensate for the loss, I for one am going to rant as loud as I can. And what about Apple? Mavericks apparently adversely affected other HDD brands. My days of being a Mac fanatic are gone. 

But in reality, I think that all I am going to accomplish is raising my blood pressure.  I guess I should just move along and consider the tremendous loss the people in the Philippines are enduring. Certainly, makes our data loss pale in comparison.

Hello all, hello Si-Guy,

I couldn’t agree more.

The latest post from support - 10, yes TEN - days ago says that WD will release an updated software that will resolve this issue.

Still waiting.

When you purchase a hard drive, you are likely to want to store data on it.

When you purchase an external one, you are likely to store important stuff on it, like backups.

When you purchase a raid one system, you spend twice the amount of money o double your chance of keeping that data safe.

WD has failed on all accounts


clatoo wrote:

Hello all, hello Si-Guy,

I couldn’t agree more.

The latest post from support - 10, yes TEN - days ago says that WD will release an updated software that will resolve this issue.

Still waiting.

When you purchase a hard drive, you are likely to want to store data on it.

When you purchase an external one, you are likely to store important stuff on it, like backups.

When you purchase a RAID1 system, you spend twice the amount of money o double your chance of keeping that data safe.

WD has failed on all accounts


Well, I there is another side. Two of my MyBook Duo 2x3 TB and 2x4 TB are gone after an iMac lockup - not during WD use. At least I received intensive WD support. Unfortunately, it has not helped so far…

However, I am convinced that Apple has its share on the mess!  After OS X 10.5, any update made some printers obsolete (faulty Apple drivers instead of the original HP or Canon drivers…), require fumbling with drivers or even Terminal commands to reinstall external devices. That is not what Apple users deserve. Mavericks was the worst with its many useless apps, undesired simplifications and traps. Steve Jobs would call his staff into the wood shack!

It would be interesting to learn what actually caused the RAID crashes on the many WD, but also LaCie, Buffalo etc. drives. Many of them running for years with any OS X 10.9 other than Mavericks…