macOS 27 Golden Gate breaks CoreStorage volumes, leaving users unable to mount, convert, or erase them
macOS 27 does not support CoreStorage volumes
Wade Tregaskis reports that macOS 27 Golden Gate drops all support for CoreStorage and encrypted HFS+ volumes. Disk Utility and diskutil fail with cryptic errors, and even erasing the volume is blocked by a persistent 'Resource busy' bug. A convoluted workaround exists: delete the logical volume group, reboot, then erase. Tregaskis had to rebuild his volumes from backups, and he calls for better workarounds.
Not only does Golden Gate just not support CoreStorage / encrypted HFS+ volumes, out of the box you can’t do anything with them – can’t mount them, can’t convert them to APFS, can’t even erase them.
- Marsymars
Well, heck.
I posted ~7 months ago about my decision to use HFS+ for backups, and had a couple skeptical replies. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47317123)
I guess I misjudged Apple's commitment to support HFS+ long-term.
It now seems like there's no real native way of doing encrypted backups to HDDs on macOS (APFS not really recommended for HDDs)... the options are either encrypted Time Machine to a network location, or a third-party tool.
Guess I'll figure out SuperDuper or Carbon Copy.
- someonehere
With macOS 27, I don't know who Apple is trying to outdo?. 27 has been a total disaster for me and my setup at home.
Back when there was a little more rivalry between Microsoft and Apple, Apple would come up with these really cool things to showcase the operating system and make lives easier. Now, I don't know what it is they're trying to prove with this operating system. I also hate the fact that they skinned the whole operating system around a failed hardware product.
- AceJohnny2
FWIW, this is listed as deprecated in the Release Notes:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-note... (Search for CoreStorage; their fragment links are hilariously broken)
The premier 3rd Party technical blog Eclectic Light talked about it in June:
https://eclecticlight.co/2026/06/17/what-to-do-with-your-enc...
I can't immediately find prior warnings that this was coming.
The following technical note from July 22nd says Encrypted HFS+ Volumes won't be supported in macOS *28*, so this seems a bit early...
- hmartin
Also dropped support for FireWire drives, as I just found out the hard way.
- exabrial
MacOs 27 is a disaster. All of the sudden, I have 35% of a computer left to do any kind of work.