Iclouddrive backup running slow, ZONE_BUSY warnings

Help and Support
1

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

I set up an iclouddrive remote and a crypt remote yesterday and ran an initial backup overnight. The estimated backup time is sitting at around 10 weeks.

The same initial backup for OneDrive finished overnight. Also using crypt.

It looks like it might be due to rate limit errors, but I have tried with default transfers and checkers and still see them occasionally. Transfer speeds generally just seem very slow.

Run the command 'rclone version' and share the full output of the command.

rclone v1.69.0
- os/version: darwin 15.2 (64 bit)
- os/kernel: 24.2.0 (arm64)
- os/type: darwin
- os/arch: arm64 (ARMv8 compatible)
- go/version: go1.23.4
- go/linking: dynamic
- go/tags: none

Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)

iclouddrive

The command you were trying to run (eg rclone copy /tmp remote:tmp)

rclone sync ~/Documents icloudsecure:Documents --exclude=*/node_modules/ --exclude=*/.angular/ --progress --transfers 16 --checkers 64 --fast-list --max-backlog 999999 --bind 0.0.0.0 --backup-dir icloudsecure:Documents-old_${now}

I also tried with default transfers and checkers and get similar results.

Please run 'rclone config redacted' and share the full output. If you get command not found, please make sure to update rclone.

[icloud]
type = iclouddrive
apple_id = XXX
password = XXX
cookies = XXX
trust_token = XXX

[icloudsecure]
type = crypt
remote = icloud:_encrypted
filename_encryption = off
directory_name_encryption = false
password = XXX

A log from the command that you were trying to run with the -vv flag

2025/02/24 09:32:31 DEBUG : pacer: low level retry 2/10 (error HTTP error 409 (409 Conflict) returned body: "{\n  \"uuid\" : \"REDACTED\",\n  \"messageForDeveloper\" : \"Sync zone CAS Op-Lock failed. There was a concurrent write and this operation was rejected. Retry request...\",\n  \"error_code\" : \"ZONE_BUSY\",\n  \"serverErrorCode\" : \"ZONE_BUSY\",\n  \"reason\" : \"Sync zone CAS Op-Lock failed. There was a concurrent write and this operation was rejected. Retry request...\"\n}")
2

Thank you for testing and feedback!

I hope you are not using it for anything important (you should not).

Keep in mind that it is BETA remote. So things can break, change etc.

3

I'm continuing to use multiple remotes, so it's mainly just a mirror. iCloud support is very welcomed though, since I've got a couple unused terabytes.

Is this a known issue, or is it only affecting some users?

4

No idea. Let's see if other iCloud users comment.

At the moment any serious use is rather limited IMO - mainly due to 30 day max token validity and multiple bugs:

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