Here are two pieces of feedback about some serious issues with OS X Mavericks that I have run across. Both are professional colleagues, and the two office computers mentioned below are in my company's office.
Also... a close family friend had her MacBook Pro total crash after the install, and the computer is currently at the Genius Bar in the Apple Store to see if they can fix it. I understand that these problems are not happening to everyone, but I have become much more cautious about the automatic Mac "upgrades" recently. Therefore, I am still waiting, because at this point my personal computers are running fine. I wish I had waited on the latest OS 7 phone "upgrade", but ya can't go back!
** A potentially serious issue with OS X Mavericks and Western Digital Hard drives. Here's the link:
http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/11/01/western-digital-warning-customers-of-data-loss-with-apple-mavericks/** A pretty serious bug with the 10.9 upgrade that Apple recently released. It can potentially corrupt your entire hard drive. So far I've found it on two of my family's laptops and in the two office iMac computers I updated.
If you have not updated to 10.9, then ignore this email
If you have, please read on.
The update corrupts the disk's partition table and possibly more. The partition table is what knows where your volumes (e.g. "Macintosh HD") are located on the disk (i.e. from this sector to this sector). If the table becomes corrupted enough, your drive will effectively disappear.
To see if you have the problem please try the following:
- Launch Disk Utility from within your Utilities folder (found in your Applications folder) on your main drive.
- Select your drive from the list on the left hand side of the window that comes up.
- Select Repair Disk from the bottom right of the window
- After 5-15 minutes it will say (usually in green) something like "
The volume XXX appears to be OK." where XXX is the name of your volume. If so then you're fine and there is nothing to worry about.
- If it says (usually in red) something like "
the volume/disk cannot be repaired or efi partition table corrupted please repair disk." Then you have an issue.
To fix this you will need access to a second mac running 10.9 and a firewire cable.
- Please backup your computer first. I cannot guarantee that this won't trash your data. I've never had an issue doing this but that doesn't mean you won't.
- If the affected computer is a laptop, make sure it's plugged in.
- Boot the affected mac in target disk mode by rebooting while holding down the T key on the keyboard. The screen should have an icon that looks like a Y floating around.
- Plug the firewire cable into the affected mac and the other mac running 10.9
- Launch Disk Utility on the second computer.
- Select the affected mac (it will show up with an orangeish icon with your drive name underneath) and run repair disk on it.
- After 5-15 minutes the affected mac should be repaired.
- Shutdown the second mac (not the affected one), and then force shutdown the now fixed mac by holding down the power button until the computer shuts down.
- Disconnect the firewire cable from both machines.
- Reboot your computer and you're good to go.
Hopefully this makes sense
I've logged the bug with Apple but I wouldn't wait for them to fix the problem if you're affected.
Hope the helps ...
