External Shows Up When It Wants To. Is This A Yosemite Bug?

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BW1965

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I have a peculiar problem and wondered if anyone else has it.

I have a WD MyBook about 3 years old and under Yosemite it seems to like to show up as an attached drive whenever it wants to, or maybe I should say whenever Yosemite will allow it to - that's the question.

I thought this was a hardware problem like the drive or the cable being bad. Years ago I got this Scannerz program to help me isolate some problems with another system. I figured I'd use it to test the system but it was apparently outdated. I updated to the newest version of Scannerz, which much to my surprise was still free (how long that will last, who knows!!) and ran a battery of tests. When the drive shows up after booting I was able to test the following:

1. The external HD - no problems
2. The cable - no problems
3. I/O subsystem - no problems
4. CPU and memory - no problems

It found no problems with anything. SMART checks on the drive show no problem. NOTHING is showing any problems.

This is a strange problem, almost like at boot time the OS is deciding whether or not to allow the drive to connect, and after making its decision the drive will either show up or not. If it shows up, it's perfectly accessible, if it doesn't show show up, it's like the drive isn't even connected. It's almost like it's being rejected for some security conflict.

Here are some more details about the drive:

1. It's USB
2. It's a WD 2TB MyBook for Mac
3. Drivers are NOT installed
4. Swapping out cables didn't help either
5. It's passed every possible test I can throw at it using Scannerz, smartmontools smartctl, etc..when it's seen
6. It's a regular HFS formatted drive.
7. It's a direct connection, no hubs in the way

Is this a Yosemite bug? Is anyone else having problems like this.

Thanks.
 
Have you tried just reseating the usb cable when it doesn't show?
When you shut down your system, do you also turn off the WD? That is, if it is the model that has its own on/off switch at the back.
 
Hi Cheryl:

Thanks for the response, but I've tried that before, and I've even tried different cables. It's almost like Yosemite is simply refusing to acknowledge that the drive is there, but in a random manner. I don't get it. This is the strangest thing I've ever seen.
 
I got 10.4 beta and because I was still worried that there may be something wrong with the system I installed it on a Firewire drive as a fresh install. This is showing no signs of having the same problem. Either they fixed whatever it was or there was just some junk left over from previous installs in the old one that it was messing something up.

I did at one point have the WD drivers installed for the external drive but I removed them…or at least I thought I did. Maybe there was some remnant hanging around.
 
BW1965 said:
I got 10.4 beta and because I was still worried that there may be something wrong with the system I installed it on a Firewire drive as a fresh install. This is showing no signs of having the same problem. Either they fixed whatever it was or there was just some junk left over from previous installs in the old one that it was messing something up.

I did at one point have the WD drivers installed for the external drive but I removed them…or at least I thought I did. Maybe there was some remnant hanging around.
Click to expand...

If you are worried about older kecks on your system then use the free application (Apple Techs use this program) EtreCheck and run it. It will print out a system report that will show you all the drivers, system hacks as well as know Trojans and the path to every item not compatible and can be manually deleted! Then after all the deleting them immeadiatly restart so the system drivers will be not start. If you do this and you can expect a slow restart. Then after that first restart your Mac should run a lot faster!
 
Satcomer said:
If you are worried about older kecks on your system then use the free application (Apple Techs use this program) EtreCheck and run it. It will print out a system report that will show you all the drivers, system hacks as well as know Trojans and the path to every item not compatible and can be manually deleted! Then after all the deleting them immeadiatly restart so the system drivers will be not start. If you do this and you can expect a slow restart. Then after that first restart your Mac should run a lot faster!
Click to expand...

After using it for a few weeks with 10.10.4 I can safely say the problem is gone. I guess it was some type of a glitch in 10.10.3.
 
BW1965 said:
After using it for a few weeks with 10.10.4 I can safely say the problem is gone. I guess it was some type of a glitch in 10.10.3.
Click to expand...

Yes but please use the free program EtreCheck. It is used by many Mac ticks. The program will bring out a report that will show you all your files and point out if it needs to deleted or updated as well as incompatible files that you as the user can find and delete youself. It most definitely will speed up your Mac!
 
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