diff --git a/R/MsBackend.R b/R/MsBackend.R
index bf70aca5..92b8214a 100644
--- a/R/MsBackend.R
+++ b/R/MsBackend.R
@@ -1044,7 +1044,7 @@ setMethod("cbind2", signature = c("MsBackend", "dataframeOrDataFrameOrmatrix"),
           function(x, y = data.frame(), ...) {
     if (is(y, "matrix"))
         y <- as.data.frame(y)
-    if (any(colnames(x) %in% colnames(y)))
+    if (any(colnames(spectraData(x)) %in% colnames(y)))
         stop("spectra variables in 'y' are already present in 'x' ",
              "replacing them is not allowed")
     if (nrow(y) != length(x))
diff --git a/R/MsBackendDataFrame.R b/R/MsBackendDataFrame.R
index 7046f103..28d692cc 100644
--- a/R/MsBackendDataFrame.R
+++ b/R/MsBackendDataFrame.R
@@ -575,7 +575,7 @@ setMethod("cbind2", signature = c("MsBackendDataFrame",
           function(x, y = data.frame(), ...) {
               if (is(y, "matrix"))
                   y <- as.data.frame(y)
-              if (any(colnames(x) %in% colnames(y)))
+              if (any(colnames(spectraData(x)) %in% colnames(y)))
                   stop("spectra variables in 'y' are already present in 'x' ",
                        "replacing them is not allowed")
               if (nrow(y) != length(x))
diff --git a/R/MsBackendMemory.R b/R/MsBackendMemory.R
index b25c969d..4d232496 100644
--- a/R/MsBackendMemory.R
+++ b/R/MsBackendMemory.R
@@ -678,7 +678,7 @@ setMethod("cbind2", signature = c("MsBackendMemory",
           function(x, y = data.frame(), ...) {
               if (is(y, "matrix"))
                   y <- as.data.frame(y)
-              if (any(colnames(x) %in% colnames(y)))
+              if (any(colnames(spectraData(x)) %in% colnames(y)))
                   stop("spectra variables in 'y' are already present in 'x' ",
                        "replacing them is not allowed")
 
diff --git a/inst/test_backends/test_MsBackend/test_spectra_subsetting.R b/inst/test_backends/test_MsBackend/test_spectra_subsetting.R
index b17a8bec..76d676a4 100644
--- a/inst/test_backends/test_MsBackend/test_spectra_subsetting.R
+++ b/inst/test_backends/test_MsBackend/test_spectra_subsetting.R
@@ -76,6 +76,9 @@ test_that("cbind2 works", {
     expect_true(validObject(res))
     expect_equal(ncol(spectraData(res)), length(spectraVariables(be)) + 1)
     expect_equal(res$m, 1:seql)
+    ## no replacing
+    expect_error(cbind2(be, data.frame(scanIndex = 1:seql)),
+                 "are already present")
 })
 
 #' extractByIndex. Uses [ if not implemented