Disk Utility question Mac Pro

Good Morning All,

I have a 2017 Mac Pro with touch bar. All my computer knowledge came from online videos, so please be kind. I regularly use "First Aid" to scan disk for issues as well as "force quit" programs in the Activity Monitor in the understanding it's healthy maintenance. On my disk utility Apple SSD SM0512L Media, a new partition 1qAZASWE3Q2 appeared. Why? What does it mean? What do I do? What's best for my older laptop health wise? Thank you, Tawnya



MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 13.7

Posted on Mar 22, 2025 12:28 AM

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Mar 22, 2025 7:52 AM in response to Tawnya2206

Tawnya2206 wrote:

Good Morning All,
I have a 2017 Mac Pro with touch bar. All my computer knowledge came from online videos, so please be kind.

I regularly use "First Aid" to scan disk for issues as well as "force quit" programs in the Activity Monitor in the understanding it's healthy maintenance.

On my disk utility Apple SSD SM0512L Media, a new partition 1qAZASWE3Q2 appeared. Why? What does it mean? What do I do? What's best for my older laptop health wise? Thank you, Tawnya

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/4e25c3ff-de87-4e9d-bb92-78ef3da60cbf



Mac Pro is a Desktop computer...





You do not say what macOS this is, or if you just upgraded the macOS, but the structure looks normal


On your MacBook Pro you would know more if you highlight the Volume in question...


Is there an associated issue???


It simply appears to be not the default naming scheme...


you can compare your screen shot vs default macOS structure/ and naming scheme :


I see nothing out of order.








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Mar 22, 2025 7:50 AM in response to Tawnya2206

<< "force quit" programs in the Activity Monitor in the understanding it's healthy maintenance.>>


force quit is a desperation move, and should ONLY be used when a program will not respond to a more Polite QUIT command off its menu. It is not likely to be the cause of your trouble, but being forced to use it more often than 'Rarely' suggests (but is not a certainty) you MAY have a another festering issue with your computer.


As for that additional container and Volume: There is no known MacOS feature that includes creating a volume with that name. Its name, which includes many random letters from the left side of the keyboard, suggests you leaned on the keyboard and created it by accident while doing something else.


As it is, will not harm ANYTHING. I suggest you Erase that volume and leave it alone until you are doing other work that requires you to fiddle with your drive format. Deleting a Volume can cause unexpected side issues.


If you MUST fiddle with it now, be sure you have a Trusted recent backup, because any OOPs could eliminate your drive. That partition would be removed inside the Partition function.

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Mar 22, 2025 8:43 AM in response to Tawnya2206

I agree with leroydouglas. The structure of the disks seems normal, but the naming convention is...a bit weird. Even the name i0 is a bit strange, as it is not the default naming scheme meaning someone (you?) had to do that deliberately. So you would expect "i0" and "i0 - Data" to go together. But if everything is working fine...


Now, that said - wherever you read or watched that running First Aid on disks all the time, and Force Quitting apps from Activity Monitor, is good maintenance...that's 100% wrong. Those are tools for when things have gone wrong, not for preventing things from going wrong. Don't do that.



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Disk Utility question Mac Pro

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