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Why do I have a third HD on my Home Page?

When I upgraded to Big Sur I had a third HD show on my Home Page but I only have two, 1 internal and 1 external, attached. The fourth is labeled as if it is my 1T backup which was on here some years ago but was changed out to a 4T at the time I put this computer online. The only 1T I have is being used on another computer as its primary disk (dual boot because of several things) which was totally wiped and reformatted prior to setting it up to take 10.11 for that computer.


I have dried both Disk Utilities and Drag to Trash to dismount it but every time I restart it pops back up again. I have checked "About this Mac" and it does not show that HD though it is shown in Disk Utilities.

Disk Utilities shows four icons for two external HDs, Drive and Partition, but unable to discover any method to delete the 1T which is the primary GHOST.


Also, both disks show in the Time Machine Preferences > Select disk but nothing about how the 1T is connected.


A check of my Time Machine files shows this started immediately after the OS Upgrade completed on 4/11/21.

I have an Airport that is used to access my three computers, one via ethernet, together.


Just a thought. I did a 'copy' disk to disk when I set up the 4T to be my backup for this machine and it was from the 1T which at the time had a different name than what is showing on this screen.


HELP!!!


iMac 21.5″, macOS 11.3

Posted on Jun 14, 2021 7:22 PM

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9 replies

Jun 14, 2021 9:28 PM in response to DiZoE

I will use this one to answer both.


Attached are the four snapshots of the various places noted in my original note.


BOY WHAT A MESS. I took snapshots but when I try to drag/drop it only opens up the top of the five screenshots as a new tab. I clicked on the 'paper clip' and tried to drag/drop and get the same action. Finally had to use 'image insertion' to get them posted.

As can be seen in the first image, Batestar backup 4 is an invalid HD.

Image 2 shows the description of the above on Disk Utilities

Image 3 shows all the HDs attached to my computer. BateStar 03 10.... is an old name for BateStar 03 11 (I use the OS as part of the name.

Image 4 shows my FireWire buss info (the old backup 1T was connected here)

Image 5 shows my USB buss info (my 4T is connected to #3 on back). Following this is the Keyboard info.

I am extremely reluctant to use the Terminal Mode especially at my age - 9/15=80, and I am sometimes forgetful due medications and hydration. i.e. will start to do something I have done many time and get to a point where I am seemingly looking at a deep hole and not way across. Sometime it is only temporary and other somewhat longer.


WGB



[Image Edited by Moderator to Remove Personal Information]


Jun 14, 2021 7:53 PM in response to Sparkgapper

The description of your problem is confusing. In order to collect enough details about your hardware and devices please do the following and paste the information so we can see the details. These commands will list out all the possible disk mounts you have including network mounts:


Open Terminal


diskutil list | pbcopy


That will have copied the command output to your clipboard. Paste it in a reply.


Ditto, rinse and repeat with the following commands.


diskutil apfs list | pbcopy


mount | pbcopy 


system_profiler -detailLevel mini | pbcopy

Jun 14, 2021 7:54 PM in response to Sparkgapper

What do you see in Disk Utility?

You should have an OS Volume, a Data Volume, and a Snapshot of the OS volume.

If you have more than those three things, you likely have an orphaned data volume from a reinstallation.

Select each Data volume and look at the Mount Point in the info window. If it is mounted to /Volumes, you can remove it.

The current data volume is mounted to /System/Volumes/Data.

Jun 15, 2021 6:01 AM in response to Barney-15E

It still is not clear enough on the details, please run at least this Terminal command:


diskutil apfs list | pbcopy


You can copy the command line above to the clipboard and paste it into Terminal, and press Return. Then come back to this discussion and paste and the results will appear. This will let us know exactly what is going on with those 3 disk volumes on your internal drive so we can provide the proper advise on how to clean it up safely.


At this point, an educated guess tells me you have 3 APFS volumes on the internal drive. The internal drive is 1TB and you are confused by the size also showing 1TB for each of the individual volumes. Well that is because APFS creates a container and inside that container you have volumes and each volume actually shares the total free space between multiple volumes in the container. This is extremely useful if you wish to dual boot different macOS versions such as Catalina and Big Sur. You no longer need to allocate partition sizes, etc. You just create a second volume and providing you have enough total free space it all balances itself out in the end. It's also handy for the now read only System volume and read/write Data volume that appear in Finder as one volume. This is all APFS magic that allows for these new features.


External (Western Digital WD MyBook):

"BateStar 04 Backup" is an HFS+ Time Machine volume

Internal

"BateStar 03 11.3.x" is your primary internal macOS volume

"BateStar 03 10.11.x" is your previous internal macOS volume

"batestar backup 04" is perhaps a copy of one of the above or a copy of the Time Machine external disk volume


We need to know the APFS details of the 3 volumes on your internal disk. The screenshots don't show all the information.





Why do I have a third HD on my Home Page?

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