System is looking for a Western Digital drive

I've had a Spotlight indexing problem that seems to be partially fixed but I see something in console under the system log that may be preventing Spotlight from finishing it's indexing.
Here's the reference:
Sep 17 11:28:57 Macintosh-2 WDDriveManagerStatusMenu[167]: *** attempt to pop an unknown autorelease pool (0x843400)
This is a reference to a Western Digital Drive...the drive was put in a new case.
I keep getting this error message in Console in the system log...Spotlight gets to within 30 secs of indexing, then keeps delaying it's completion. Could this error message be preventing the completion?

People used to get that Console message before WDDriveManager was updated for Snow Leopard. Back in 2009-2010, it was not compatible with Snow Leopard.
Do you have the latest updates installed for WDDriveManager?
Secondly, my understanding is that the main purpose of WDDriveManager is to enable functionality of lights and buttons on the WD hard drive case. However if you moved the drive to a new case, perhaps such functionality is no longer relevant or perhaps there is a conflict there (software looking for a certain type of HD case but can't find it?). In that case, you might consider removing or uninstalling WDDriveManager as it might no longer work with this new case you have.
Are you using Snow Leopard? (I assume so because that's this forum, but your post indicates 10.4). Do you have the latest version of WD software? What are you using the WD software for? Is your HD case compatible with WD's software?

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Looking for a new Hard Drive for my MacBook

I have less than 1 GB left on my Hard Drive and I'm looking for a bigger drive. I'm looking for a 250 GB as that will match my desktop. I know they were some talk about issues with the Western Digital Drives.
Any suggestions? Also, I was thinking of going for one that was 7200 RPM. Is that going to be a lot louder and kill my battery a lot quicker? Thanks!

I've got a 200GB Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 drive in my MacBook right now. About the only issue is that the bearings are a bit louder than the Apple OEM Seagate Momentus 5300.3 drive that was installed at the factory. Right now iStat Pro says that the hard drive temp is 72°F, which is about the same as my factory drive. Most specs say that you might expect maybe a half watt more power draw, which is unimportant if it's plugged in most of the time, and fairly small if you're on battery power.
Initially I thought my MacBook was going to destroy itself, with the fan hitting maximum and CPU cycles being used up. Turns out it was just Spotlight indexing the hard drive, and the same would have been true for any new drive installation. I didn't think it would be an issue with a cloned drive, but it was.

Time machine backup fails; error creating folder. Western Digital drive requires password which is perhaps/likely the issue. I can't eliminate the password/encryption.

Time Machine backup fails on new WD external drive (My Passport Studio); error creating folder (after several hours of Time Machine apparently working).
Background: I purchased a Western Digital drive from an Apple Store to use for Time Machine backup. I followed the Western Digital instructions that came with the drive for Mac. I didn't get the Time Machine prompt which the instructions indicated I would receive--namely to select whether I want to encrypt my Time Macine backups. (I already have a Time Machine backup I use at another location, which is perhaps why I didn't receive a prompt.)
I decided to install the Western Digital utilities and security software that comes on the disk--with a view to potentially encrypting the disk (since I still wanted to have an encrypted backup since I was mobile). I forgot that (from experience 2-years previous) that I shouldn't install Western Digital software because it just makes life really complicated.
I tried several times to do a Time Machine backup with failures each time (error creating the backup folder). I tried to get help from WD but I don't think the technicians were following what my issue was. Potentially I was not helpful in explaining it. I deleted the WD applications from my system after the first contact with WD. However the problem persisted--I still had an encrypted hard drive. After three phone sessions with three different WD techs I still could not get a solution. (By the second call I was not at all interested in having an encrypted drive--I just wanted to format and restore the drive to an unencrypted state so that I could have SOME kind of Time Machine backup.)
I still don't have a solution--either to get Time Machine working with the WD encryption/password on the drive, or to remove the encryption so I can backup. Right now my options are to return the drive to the Apple Store -- or get a return authorization from WD. Seems crazy since the drive is fine and I have the working password.

Never install "helpful software" provided by WD and Seagate (or any HD mfg.)
All such stuff is fluff and nonsense that interferes with normal HD operation.
Always when you buy a new HD, format it for Mac and then use it to TM backup or clone a HD, or archive data.
Less is more on HD new out of box. A "blank brick", no fluff and cotton candy software

Mac Pro RAID Card and Western Digital drives

I'm having huge troubles with these items.
I first installed four WD7500AYYS (Raid Edition) to build a RAID 5 and install Leopard on it. At this point, one of the drives was probably DOA and didn't show up in the bay. I then reinstalled the Seagate that shipped with the machine, then proceeded to create another enhanced JBOD raid with one of the WD drives. After a couple of seconds, RAID utility reported an error (disk about to fail and such). I then tried with another one. The process ended with a kernel panic after two hours, while RAID utility was still marking the drive for enhanced JBOD. That disk never show up again, in any bay.
At this point, I'm left with two WD drives. I can't get past the creation of a RAID set with them, no matter what. Either RAID utility reports an error, or it says the disk has been ejected, or it keeps create the RAID for hours... The later usually ends with a "force quit", or a force shutdown. During these attemps, the RAID card went missing once, then it appeared again on the following reboot. The RAID battery, which was fully charged at first, is now being "repaired" (charging ?).
I then ran AHT to see whether there was something wrong. No errors reported.
Because all four drives were Raid Edition, I thought this could be the root of the problems. So I bought a Caviar SE16 (WD5000AAKS). To no avail. It fails too, in the very same way. And now it no longer appears in any bay.
The last step I took was to remove the RAID card (connecting the iPass connector to the motherboard). Out of the five WD drives, only two RE2 (the two that still show up with the RAID card) do appear in disk utility. But disk utility never ends "writing the partition map" or "preparing for initialization".
By now, I end up with five WD drives that appear to be just dead, as if they were killed by the RAID card trying to RAID them. The only drive that works, with or without the RAID card, in any bay, is the Seagate. I didn't try to fiddle with it though (I'm reluctant to format it just to see whether I can create an enhanced JBOD raid with it).
So the question is, are Western Digital drives compatible with this RAID card ? If they do, then how a RAID card can kill them in such a way while keeping the Seagate alive ?
I'm lost in conjectures. I don't even know if/how I can bring all the WD drives back to life. I'm not sure the RAID card is faulty, I've already lost a lot of time and money, I'm not willing to buy yet another drive to see it fail too, and my Mac Pro is kind of useless as I don't want to spend time on installing/configuring everything I need on a drive that is bound to be replaced by a larger RAID 5 array.
Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

Someone yesterday or Friday, had a system with 4 x 1TB drives and Pro RAID, but in their case, it was determined later Saturday that drive bay #1 was not functioning.
Hopefully these fully retail drives, not OEMs, and I would think they are fine. They are what I would use (Sonnet Tempo only supports RE of the WD drives). Someone else, Danish?, had 3 out of 4 WD drives were DOA.
I've never had trouble buying over a dozen from OWC, so it does seem odd.
If you have SoftRAID 3.6.6 I would use that to zero the first and last 100 sectors, or you can begin to zero the whole drive and cancel at any time, just to check the health of the drive and that it can zero and not produce I/O errors.
There are two other methods for accessing and managing Mac Pro RAID, ARD and CLI
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306231
Originally, only Apple drives were supported. My understanding was that this changed. But the only article I found in KB dates back to Aug '07:
Question: What drives does Apple support with the Mac Pro RAID Card and the Xserve RAID Card?
Answer: +Only Apple drives are supported with the Mac Pro RAID Card and the Xserve RAID Card.+
My understanding that 3rd party retail drives such as WD RE2 750GB, Seagate, Hitachi were supported as well since the article was written - and I can't find where I read that, but sure that I did, as this was discussed in the past.
I'd like to find an official article. Even my friend Google was helpless

Looking for an external hard drive for my ibook...

I know there are a lot of posts related to external hard drives, but I have very specific needs that haven't been answered as far as I can tell. I run Tiger 10.4.11 on my 1.33 ghz ibook (which WON'T DIE) and need a hard drive that:
1) is Mac-friendly
2) Can be set to do auto backup when I plug in my computer
3) has at least 500GB storage
4) has at least a 3-year warranty
5) can run, power-wise, off my USB hub (though this is the least of my concerns, frankly)
6) can be used with a Macbook when I buy one next year (very important)
I'm not so concerned with speed, as I will mostly be doing backup at night, while I'm asleep. Does such a drive exist for around $100?

1) is Mac-friendly
98% of the drives meet this criteria
2) Can be set to do auto backup when I plug in my computer
I don't know any drives that will do that. Some have buttons that allow you to do backup by pushing the button.
3) has at least 500GB storage
4) has at least a 3-year warranty
A lot of those available.
5) can run, power-wise, off my USB hub (though this is the least of my concerns, frankly)
Look for a "portable" external drive.
6) can be used with a Macbook when I buy one next year (very important)
Any drive that matches the criteria above.
Does such a drive exist for around $100?
Yes many. You can watch Dealmac.com for hard drive deals. It is pretty easy to get 1 TB for $100 these days.

I use Djay for my Apple and I would like to use TC as an external hd to access from Djay, however when I look for my external T1 drive I cannot find it in iTunes so I can load onto Djay? Any help?

I use Djay for my Apple and I would like to use TC as an external hd to access from Djay, however when I look for my external T1 drive I cannot find it in iTunes so I can load onto Djay? Any help?

Initially, you asked if you can hardwire your MBA to the TC. The answer is yes, by using the optional USB Ethernet adapter that Apple provides. However, in order for your MBA to access the TC's internal or USB-attached HDD, it would need to establish a network connection to it. This would be true of any NAS device on an Ethernet network. Therein, lies the problem. Your MBA cannot connect to two networks simultaneously.
One option then, would be to have two separate iTunes Media folders; one on the MBA & the other on the TC. This way, you can download the music to your MBA when connected to the Internet at the AirPort lounge, and then use iTunes Consolidate Library feature to transfer the audio files to the TC's iTunes Media Folder location. A great program to help maintain multiple iTunes Librarys and/or Media Folders, that you may want to consider, is PowerTunes.

System keeps looking for a 'server' that does not exist. Is says the old name of my Airport Extreme. Clicking it away (4x) it gets through.

System keeps looking for a 'server' that does not exist. Is says the old name of my Airport Extreme. Clicking it away (4x) finally gets through.

Other weirdness to report: my neighbor upstairs appears to have a Linksys router network on channel 6. My AEBS is on channel 1 so there shouldn't be interference... but according to iStumbler sometimes the signal leaps to 64000 (keep in mind my own Airport never tops 60)! Is that potentially the problem?
Might it be possible that your neighbor just acquired a 802.11n (pre-N) wireless router recently?
802.11n effectively increases capacity by doubling the number of Wi-Fi radios and increasing the number of antennas used to push signals out of those radios. 802.11n splits a data frame into multiple pieces. It then transmits these pieces in parallel using multiple radios that are attached to multiple antennas. These antennas blast out signals from virtually the same vantage point – scattering the signals everywhere.
You may find the following ZDNet article interesting: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=247
Even if he did not, and you are on good terms, you might want to ask if he can temporarily turn off his wireless, or, at least, reduce the signal strength to see if that will help in your situation.

Looking for recommendations - new internal drive for MBP

Hi all,
I have a 17" MBP core 2 duo from a couple of years ago, with a 100GB 7200rpm drive. I want to swap out the drive with a new 500GB drive, still 7200rpm, so I'm looking for recommendations as to what people think are the current best of the crop. Any suggestions?
Cheers,
Antonio

I was looking for a 500GB 7200RPM drive for my MBP 15" at the end of 2008, but no one made one yet. I saw the Seagate ST9500420ASG 500GB 7200RPM 16MB BUFFER SERIAL ATA listed as coming soon on MacMall and a few other places in January 2009 and ordered it as soon as it was available.
I had done some research on power consumption and performance... Tom's Hardware had some good info on the subject. The fastest drives at the time were the 320GB 7200 RPM and 500GB 5400 RPM. If the trends I came across during my research held up, power consumption for the new Seagate shouldn't have affected my battery life too much. All my research seemed to confirm this.
Now that I have been using the drive for a few months, I can tell you that my batter life has taken a HUGE hit. I used to easily get 5 hours with my old 120 GB stock drive... now, I'm lucky if I get 2 hours. Plus, it seems that this drive gets hot enough to cause performance issues.. I'm not sure if that's the case yet, but I will be bringing my MBP into the Apple store to check on it.
At this point, I'm willing to sacrifice some speed for more battery life and a cooler running computer.
All this to say, be sure you're willing to sacrifice some battery life for the biggest and fastest drive around.

Looking for a back up drive for photos and videos that works with time machine, prefer wireless. Time capsule has poor reviews and already have BT hub

Looking for a back up drive for photos and videos that works with time machine, prefer wireless. Time capsule has poor reviews and already have BT hub that serves as a good router. 3gb or 4gb capacity preferred but 2 would suffice.

Plug a NAS into the BT Hub that does TM. Look at Synology.
You just use the wireless of the hub.
But the cheapest solution is still the TC.

Western Digital Drive stopped working

Hi all,
I have a Western Digital External USB Hard Drive that connects to my PB using a USB 2.0 cable. I used to use this hard drive for quite some time. I had to stop using it for a while (3 months or so), and then when I tried to use it again, nothing happens.
I changed the cable, tried to connect to my iMac as well but nothing happens. I can hear the drive spinning when it is on, but the drive does not mount, actually nothing happens when it is connected to my PB.
Can anyone help? any incompabilities of this drive and Mac OS X 10.4.6?
thanks,
Cleidson
PowerBook 12 Mac OS X (10.4.6) 768 MB DDR SDRAM

The firmware is to the bridge itself. Use the System
Profiler to see if it appears as a USB device.
ok. i connected the external drive to my powerbook, turned it on and looked in the System Profiler. there was nothing related to the drive in it.
what should i do?
thanks,
cleidson

Why does my Western Digital drive freeze my OSX

Hey all!
I'm in a bad spot.
Yesterday I was going through files on my 6TB western digital my book hard drive connected to my old iMac running snow leopard. I had been playing many different movie files from my camera in quick time player to categorize them during a couple of days and everything had been fine. But all of a sudden quick time froze and wouldn't answer so I had to force quit it and then I tried again, then the same thing happened and then Finder and everything froze and I had to force shut off the computer by holding down the power button. Then the same thing happened after I restarted the computer. After each time I have to force off the computer the WD hard drive still has its light on and keep sounding like it's working hard and I have to pull the power plug from it to make it stop.
Then I started it again to try to just copy files from it but the drive would freeze OSX again. So I connected it to my old macbook pro and the same thing happened but then I tried to connect it with usb instead of fire wire and it seemed to act normal. Then I replaced the firewire and tested and it seemed to work fine on both computers. So I assumed it was the firewire cable that was causing problems. Since I was a bit shaken I started to do backups of everything from the hard drive and copied a folder of 323 GB during the night. In the morning it had copied everything but 10 GB and had frozen again. So again I connected both to the Macbook Pro and copied over what was missing. Then I tried to copy another folder but it froze again.
It behaves very irrational in my eyes and I wonder what is wrong and what to do?
When I start the computer without that drive, it acts normally and the same goes for when I connect another external hard drive.
Did a control with disk utility on both the internal and the external drives, and it said they are fine.
I didn't notice that the hard drive was standing in the sun which was shining through the window behind my iMac and the room was quite warm. Can that be what started all this?
Also I noticed that the folder that I did a backup of, shows different content size on the Macbook pro and on the iMac. And this goes for both the original folder and the backup on the other external drive. Finder says both folders are 301 GB on the Macbook and 323 on the iMac. This freaks me out since this is a very important folder and I can't loose 22 GB. Anyone who knows why this can be?
I would be extremely grateful for any thoughts on this!
Thanks

nopointsforsecondplace wrote:
Thanks a lot rccharles, I'm gonna try this.
When data rescue (data recovery software) makes a clone of the problem disk, does it use the disk in another way than when it does normal data recovery? When I try to do data recovery it freezes after maybe 20 minutes just as when I just copy files in Finder, is it different when making a clone?
I don't know how Data Rescue works (it's proprietary software).
It does sound like your disk could be physically damaged (you still need to try an external case) - if you continue to try to repair you may lose even more data until the disk is totally unreadable. Imagine a spec of dust scratching across your data - the act of trying to read & re-read can cause more damage. As more pieces of disk get scratched off the platters the entire inside of the mechanism gets covered in dust, resulting in more scratches, more data loss…
Seriously, the best option you have is to take it to data recovery professionals for them to look at it. They may be able to open it & replace failed parts or take a copy with a limited amount of corrupted files. Some indications may be the sound the disk makes when it 'freezes' - but that is only a guide for professional ears.
Recovery software can try to re-read data when disks encounter errors. Some smart recovery software will force the disk to avoid retrying these - that skips over the damage - the files in the damaged area will be unusable but the surrounding data may still be recoverable. Professionals may take one copy & avoid using the disk until they have diagnosed how it failed - limiting the potential for more damage.
ddrescue is one command line tool that will clone without retrying to re-read, but that is complex to use.
http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html
Here are examples from an old disk that ground up itself…
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=107678
Your issue probably is not be the same as that example, I'm not trying to scare you but you should consider how important this data is, repeated recovery attempts can make that impossible even for professionals.

200GB western Digital Drive stopped working

Hi all,
I have a Western Digital External USB Hard Drive that connects to my PB using a USB 2.0 cable. I used to use this hard drive for quite some time. I had to stop using it for a while (3 months or so), and then when I try to use it again, nothing happens.
I changed the cable, tried to connect to my iMac as well but nothing happens. I can hear the drive spinning when it is on, but the drive does not mount, actually nothing happens when it is connected to my PB.
Can anyone help? do i need to update the firmware? if so, how? i cheked the system profile when the PB is connected to the drive, but no information related to the drive shows up.
thanks,
Cleidson

Cleidson
Like BGreg has described, this sounds like a power supply issue. I have seen many hard drives that have displayed similar symptoms. Usually replacing the power supply has fixed the problem.
For example one scenario happens like this - switching on the drive gets the hard drive spinning and any LED light on the drive to activate but the drive clicks away and fails to mount. Disk Utility can see the drive but, again, no amount of trying will get the drive to mount. Replace the power supply and the drive will mount without any issues.
2.0GHz MacBook, 15" 1.25GHz/12" 1GHz PBs, 2xPPC Mac minis, 12" iBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.8) Cube, 2xTAMs, iPod 4G & nano 2G, 1G & 2G iPs, AEBS, AX

Western Digital drives lose directory in Mavericks

I was just informed by Western Digital that there is an incompatibility between their drives and Mavericks!   I connected my MY Book Thunderbolt Duo and found that both drives showed up on my Desktop without any data.   WD advised of the Mavericks difficulty and connected me with a recovery service for the data that is hidden on the drive. Still, it entails purchasing another 4TB drive to recover the data to. Isn't the whole point to having a RAID drive??
Any other options would be appreciated while I wait for the new drive to arrive.
I can't help but wonder if the 10.9.1 release of Mavericks will address this issue and whether the best thing to do would be to wait.

Thank you.
Your thoughts and even John's (10.9.1 will probably not offer a solution) were appreciated.   That said, I along with others are looking for a solution not a should have or could have. If you read the other posts Seagate, LaCie and other drives are being affected.
As noted, WD has offered a solution but it required the purchase of another 4Tb drive.
Your comment regarding RAID gave me pause since I was under the impression that it provided some file security because it duplicates one drive onto the other. Surprise ... it is for effeciency (you already knew that). So, once this is resolved, I will be taking off the Raid function and using one as the backup drive for the other using either SuperDuper or some other program.   The RAID drive contained a lot of photos and music filling almost 2.5 TB and took a long time to accumulate.
I do use TM with a TC and another HD to backup my computer. Thought the RAID was doing that for my data.
Back to looking for other options before the new HD arrives.

2TB Western Digital Drive won't mount in my Mac Pro. Please Help

Hello, everyone. I have a Mac Pro (MacPro1,1) with an internal drive that won't mount. I bought it used last year with 12GB RAM and 1TB hard drive and SuperDrive. I have since upgraded storage with an internal 2TB drive from Seagate (no problem), and a 500GB drive (no problem) from Western Digital, and installed a second optical drive from an old Power Mac G5. I had an additional newer 2TB drive from WD that I bought as an external. I took it out of its case and put it in a carrier and then in Bay 4 of my Mac Pro. It's the only drive I've had problems with, and I don't know why. The drive is immediately rejected by OS X upon startup. The options include "Eject" and "Initialize..." but I've clicked initialize every time. Disk Utility opens and I can see the drive but for whatever reason, it will not mount. There is one partition on it, and I think when I bought it, I formatted it with GUID and Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I haven't used it as a Time Machine drive, but I've backed up some files on it. I've restarted several times, and I'm not sure if I can hear it spinning inside my computer.
Should I pull it out and see if the partition is still on the disk? Wha

When DU launches or launch it yourself, that is the most useless "eject, ignore" and there is no real initialize command anyway anymore.... Click on raw drive WDxxxx and goto Partition tab, change the number of partitions to anything (another silly item) so you can go to the Advanced Options finally
WD MyBook drives are often not standard SATA drives with power and data connectors.
Does it look like one?
It should be GUID but make sure, you can also tell from the status below.
Might even change it to something else, erase, then set it back to GUID.
Apply. And only then does it matter what user partitions you create.
Jump through hoops for no reason.
If you have Windows or a PC, use WD Lifebuard. Great at testing any SATA drive.
Quick format with zeroes. Then Extended Test. Maybe even Full Format with zeroes to insure no bad sectors.
When and where, at what point in time, did you use it and write files to it?
By "carrier" I assume you mean the drive sled to go inside the Mac Pro.
Did you ever use it in an SATA external other than WD? some of their MyBooks are moled into and drive and case cannot be used separated.

Format External Western Digital Drive to be used with only Mac

I recently ordered Western Digital My Passport Essential. I will get it by tomorrow evening.
It comes pre-formatted using NTFS file-type.
I need to format it, to be used with My MacBook Pro running Lion, and old White MacBook running Snow Leopard. One more thing, I will be using with OS X only. I don't have Windows/Linux system at my place, and I don't have any intention to be using with Windows/Linux in future.
Should I format it using HFS+ or HFS+ Journaled or something else? Why?

Like Niel said...
but also you might want to partition it rather than just erase the visible partition, i think some of these disks come with annoying hidden partitions and crappy backup software.
If you want to make sure you get the whole drive to yourself, instead of using the erase tab in Disk Utiliity, go to the partition tab, then select 1 partition (or which ever you want from the drop down.) and configure as you see fit. this will make sure that no hidden partitions remain.
You might also want to select GPT as the partition map incase you ever decide to use it to boot OS X from.

System is looking for a Western Digital drive

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