Disk Utility restore failed - inverter failed

Similar problem

For many years I have used Apple's Disk Utility to make a copy of Macbooks and iMacs hard drives to external hard drives for off-site backups. On a few occasions, to restore a Macbook or iMac hard drive without problems.

After upgrading to High Sierra, my Macbook Air's internal drive was converted, without warning, to APFS. When I attempted to use new Apple Disk Utility, installed with High Sierra, the backup to external hard drive failed with "APFS inverter failed to invert the volume".

I have tried formatting a partition as APFS file system. I have tried setting entire disk up as APFS file system, breaking APFS file system down into sizes matching Macbook Air's internal drive, etc.

Every time, I get same failed result from Apple's Disk Utility, one large file, with Error message about inverter failed to invert.

What do I have to do to get Apple's Disk Utility to make a backup copy of Macbook Air's internal drive to USB connected External disk drive?

I have worked on this extensively. For many many hours. I have used Disk Utility to make full backups of my system drive for all the years I have been using a Mac. I have tried every variation of the process I can think of, and all have failed with my APFS formatted drive. Today I gave up and downloaded Carbon Copy Cloner. Instant success. And it took almost no time compared to Disk Utility.

Thank you to everyone in all the forums listing CCC as the answer to all these APFS backup problems. I appreciate it.

I'm am also running macOS 10.13.4 with APFS file system and struggling with Disk Utility. The error message was the same "APFS inverter failed to invert the volume" saying there was an invalid argument."

Solution:

In order to restore my "Macintosh HD" to my new "JetDrive 720" I had to download a software from the internet called "Carbon Copy Cloner". Once downloaded and installed, I connected the external drive, followed the prompts and cloned the original drive. That was it, it just worked. I had a fresh new backup of my "macintosh Drive" that I could used to restore in case of data loss.

Yep. Same issue here. I never knew my file system got changed from HFS+. Now I have a partition that doesn't boot either. Trying to clone it. I'm just going to have to copy files individually to an external drive. Reinstall, format as JHFS+ and copy them back... I don't know how High Sierra will like that.

Having the same issue when I tried to upgrade my ssd to a bigger drive. I tried a 'solution' to first reinstall MacOS on the new drive, and then restore the main volume of the old drive to the new one. That was suppose to ensure that both volumes were setup correctly with efi, restore, other system partitions, etc. as well as setup the new drive with apfs.

Anyhow, it didn't work. I received the same inverter failed... Osstatus error 22 message.

Same problem :-( I'm not able to clone my SSD 1TB in a new one 4TB... Apple, any solution?

love the sarcasm