Shop E Store One or more backup bugs in macOS 15.2 Sequoia affect not only Apple’s own Time Machine utility, but also third-party apps SuperDuper and CarbonCopyCloner.
Initially, the issue appeared to only affect bootable backups, but now it appears that either it’s something more common or there are multiple bugs that affect Mac backups. It seems that it is.
What started with SuperDuper
SuperDuper developer Shirt Pocket originally used its own code to create bootable backups of Mac volumes before Apple locked down and required developers to use the company’s own replicator feature. I was there.
After SuperDuper’s bootable backups started failing, the company investigated and discovered that the bug was in Apple’s replicator code in macOS 15.2.
macOS 15.2 was released with a surprise a few days ago. What a terrible, terrible surprise. Apple broke Replicator.
Near the end of data volume replication, when attempting to copy either Preboot or Recovery, it fails with a resource busy error. Previously, resource busy could be avoided by ensuring the system remained awake. However, this new bug means there is no fix for most systems. It will only fail.
Since Apple took away the ability for third parties (like us) to copy the OS and took it upon themselves to do so, it’s their responsibility to make sure this functionality continues to work. In that regard, macOS 15.2 failed. This is their code and we are forced to rely on it to copy the OS, so our copy of the OS won’t work until they fix it.
Synology said the same issue is affecting bootable backups to NAS systems.
Widespread bugs in macOS 15 Sequoia backups
CarbonCopyCloner is also affected, and although it also typically supports bootable backups, users reported that (non-bootable) Time Machine backups also failed.
Time Machine backups don’t work on MacOS 15.2. My friend had his entire backup history wiped out by Time Machine.
This issue appears to be specific to Apple Silicon Macs.
We’ve reached out to Apple for comment and will update if we hear back.
Via Daring Fireball. Photo by Samsung Memory on Unsplash.
