My hard drives are being turned into “MyBook” and “EFI.” WHY???

[Sorryguitarist]

Why is this happening?

This has happened with any type of storage - HDD, SSD, and flash drives.
Example: “Drive A” works fine with 1TB of data. Then, when hooking it back up, my lap top turns it into “MyBook” and EFI” with both partitions showing no data.

Would doing a fresh reinstall of the OS and used programs help?

If I were to plug the corrupted hard drives to another Mac that does not have this problem, will that computer have the problem too?

Final question, would erasing the corrupted drives and creating new partitions fix them? Or should I just trash them and not risk anything?

I already have backups and would like to be able to still use those hard drives again.

I’ve heard possibilities of it being something with OS Sierra and the way it formats drives but then I’ve also read accounts of this same issue as far back as 2013.
Some say it has something to do with Western Digital hard drives but that’s as far as it goes.

 

[Fishrrman]

Are you using these drives ONLY with Macs?
Or... with Windows computers, as well?

 

[Sorryguitarist]

Are you using these drives ONLY with Macs?
Or... with Windows computers, as well?

Just with Mac. I don’t use Windows.

 

[laurihoefs]

Some older versions of WD Drive Manager had a bug that wiped any partitions on external drives and created new ones named MyBook, causing data loss.

This issue arose back in 2013, but if you have recently installed an older version of WD Drive Manager/Utilities, or recently upgraded from Mac OS X 10.8 or earlier to Sierra, you might just have encountered this old bug.

See: https://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/3...ard-drive-customers-over-mavericks-data-loss/

 

[Sorryguitarist]

Some older versions of WD Drive Manager had a bug that wiped any partitions on external drives and created new ones named MyBook, causing data loss.

This issue arose back in 2013, but if you have recently installed an older version of WD Drive Manager/Utilities, or recently upgraded from Mac OS X 10.8 or earlier to Sierra, you might just have encountered this old bug.

See: https://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/3...ard-drive-customers-over-mavericks-data-loss/

I see. Although I have never willingly installed any WD software I did use a Lacie external hard drive when this problem first happened. When I opened the enclosure, there was a WD hard drive inside. Since then, it has been happening to other drives.

 

[laurihoefs]

I see. Although I have never willingly installed any WD software I did use a Lacie external hard drive when this problem first happened. When I opened the enclosure, there was a WD hard drive inside. Since then, it has been happening to other drives.

Lacie uses WD drives in their products, but they use other manufacturers drives too. Whichever available drive fits their specs. I don’t think the Lacie drive is connected to this issue.

See if you have any WD software in your Applications folder, and if you find any, remove it. Then reboot, and see if the issue persists.

 

[spooklog]

Checking the applications folder for WD software is excellent, but I'd go a step further: Do a search using a key word like "WD." It's possible--unlikely but possible--that there is WD software somewhere else that's affecting your computer.

 

[Fishrrman]

Don't know if any of this will help, but perhaps worth looking into:

https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=6582

https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=5373

https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=3835

 

[Dick G]

I started experiencing this EFI problem and erased external HDs shortly after I installed High (Low?) Sierra OS. Wiped out all of my WD drives, though not at the same time. Did get most of my data restored. Spent much time on phone with Apple and WD and each says it's the fault of the other. I got a G-Tech ext HD and I thought that would rid me of the problem, but they are owned by WD and the HD has a EFI partition. So far, so good. I've been told by Apple that it's a problem they have hardly heard of. It seems they aren't listening. Anyone know of a drive made without the EFI partition? BTW, I had this problem on a WD 4TB RAID 0 drive. No fun there.