Have I just been hit by the WD data loss bug?

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

I uploaded to Mavericks a couple of days ago. I just noticed that my 2 TB My Book Essential (wdbaaf0020hbk-01) seems to be “missing” a lot of files and folders. 

The root folders all seem to still be there and looks like normal. But when I try to open them, with rare exceptions they appear to be completely empty. In some cases there are subfolders but those subfolders usually appear to be empty. There is a stray data file or two that is still visible.

This drive has a light bar that lights up to show how full the drive is. According to that, the drive is still 3/4ths full.

Also,  it is impossible to “eject” the drive in Finder now. When I try to eject, nothing happens.

Questions:

  1. Does this sound like the notorious  WD data loss bug that is causing data loss on Mavericks? Or does this sound like something else? (I notice that some people are complaining about completely empty disks…)

  2. Is there anything I can do at this point to recver my data? I have disconnected the drive. I also ran the WD Smartware upgrade that is supposed to fix the problem. But what now? Is the data lost? 

  3. I also have a WD Elements drive (wdbaau0020hbk-01) that so far seems to be unaffected.  I’ve disconnected it just to be safe. Is that also at risk?

The sad thing is that I’m afraid to even plug in my Time Machine drive (yeah, that’s also a WD My Book). I have two My Book Time Machine drives that I rotate (with one offsite at all times) and so all my absolutely critical data should be safe, only I’m afraid to try to access it now, or even connect my Time Machine drives to my Mac to back up new data!

In retrospect, I think it was a mistake to be so reliant on WD disks. If I continue to buy them at all going forward, I will try to also use other brands more so all my drives aren’t just one brand. 

2

I just tried something… I reconnected my affected My Book drive and tried to copy one of the “empty” folders to my internal HD. 

It’s a good news / bad news situation – the good news is that Finder now claims to be copying over 8 GB to my internal HD as part of copying the “empty” folder.

The bad news is that its also claiming that this will take TWO HOURS. It’s going very, very slowly.

3

It seems that all (or most) of my files and folders are still there, they are just “invisible” on that drive in Finder. When I copy one of the “empty” root folders to another drive, all the “invisible” files and folders are also copied.  

I left my computer running all night with Finder copying everything over to a new drive and it looks like I’ve lost very little (if any) data.

So it looks like this is not the same bug that has is hitting some people using My Book drives under Mavericks. It’s possible it’s a related issue, but I really can’t say.

4

I have the same problem with my Elements Desktop : in the finder it shows no files, it seems empty, but they are still there (I see the occupation of the HD in the Disk Utility)

I’ve tried many things and softs but I can’t read or see the files.

Even with Terminal, I tried an “ls” on the volume but I have a message indicating that I don’t have permission to read !?

(sorry for my english, I hope I’m clear enough)