OS reports that both Macintosh HD and Macintosh Data HD Have unused volume. Only 15GB of free disk space...

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Level 1

8 points

OS reports that both Macintosh HD and Macintosh Data HD Have unused volume. Only 15GB of free disk space...

Late 2015 iMAC.- running 10.15.2 OS, 48 GB memory, 500GB HD. Much trouble with Catalina but have worked through it. Problem is OS is telling me that I am out of disk space. Catalina broke the HD into two separate drives as it should but it is telling me that I only have ~15GB of drive space left when I check storage status on the 'About this Mac' utility. When I check disk utility, I have three Macintosh HD; One Data drive and two "HDs"

Disk Utility indicates that the Mac Data HD has 219GB used, 265GB in 'other volumes' and 15GB free.

The first Mac Data HD has 11Gb used, 473GB in 'other volumes' and 15GB free.

The second Mac HD has 250GB used, 234GB in 'other volumes' and 15GB free.

When I tried to upgrade to 10.15.3 it told me I did have enough free disk space. Before I "upgraded" to

Catalina, I had approximately 240 Gb of free space on my single Apple SSD 500GB HD volume. I run CleanMyMac at least once a week and keep junk and unnecessary files cleaned out. Machine runs fine but it thinks I only have 15Gb of free disk space when I should have at least 200GB+. Any advise, insight on how to cure this would be appreciated. I am writing this as the nearest apple store is 175 miles away...

iMac 27", macOS 10.12

Posted on Jan 28, 2020 7:39 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

leroy197 Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 13, 2020 8:52 AM in response to babowa

Been out of pocket for a while but I wanted to follow up with everyone who helped with my problem as to add to your experience/knowledge base. After reading the last entries from D.I. and babowa I decided to get Apple support involved. I had to get to second level for resolution but did resolve the problem. (the support person was excellent!) After much investigating, what we ended up doing was using Disk Utility and deleting the "Macintosh Data -HD" volume. Somehow Catalina duplicated the "Macintosh HD - Data" volume and labeled it "Macintosh Data - HD". It appears that why Catalina did this is only known to the OS gods... We did not reload the OS, just deleted the extra volume. Anyway it appears to have fixed the problem as I now have only the Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data volumes on my internal drive with 233 GB of free disk space now.

I would like to thank everyone, especially D.I., for their time and expertise. Thank you. Leroy197

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Answer 2

Jan 28, 2020 8:03 PM in response to leroy197

First - stop running CleanMyMac and run very far away from it. It is likely causing its share of software conflict with your Mac or worse.

Second - reboot in safe mode and let the machine run its cache purging and various drive and system housekeeping routines. It may take 10-15 minutes to boot into safe mode, so be patient. Here's a little info about that:

Use Safe Mode to isolate issues with your Mac - Apple Support

Third - consider this: EtreCheck is an awesome little diagnostic app that gathers and displays important debugging information about your Macintosh and allows you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is very highly regarded and meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help others help you troubleshoot and resolve your Mac problems.

Please navigate to the Mac App Store OR to EtreCheck.com and download the free version of EtreCheck. Once you’ve installed the app and created the report please post it with your reply to this message.

For instructions on how to attach your EtreCheck report to your reply, please click How to use Add Text when posting…

We can then use the EtreCheck report to look for the more obvious issues that may be causing your problem and advise how to correct them.

d.i.

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Answer 3

leroy197 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 28, 2020 11:45 PM in response to D.I. Johnson

d.i., I followed your instructions; Restarted in Safe Mode, and got EtreCheck and ran the program. I went ahead and bought

the power user version as it looks like good software. Report is attached below.

Thank you

leroy197

EtreCheck Report

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Answer 4

leroy197 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 29, 2020 1:12 PM in response to D.I. Johnson

d.i., good job of keeping me on the right track! I deleted CMM, emptied my trash then rebooted in Safe Mode. Once confirmed that I was in Safe Mode I rebooted in Normal mode and ran EtreCheck. I think I have the correct report attached this time.

P.S. - Catalina 10.15.3 automatically downloaded and installed last night. Everything appears to be working fine except the fact that I still have only 15GB of free hard drive space. The other Toshiba, and Hitachi drives are part of an external drive raid array

(SoftRAID). Also, the report indicates that CMM anti-malware is still active. How is that if CMM has been removed.?

Thank you

EtreCheck Report 1/29/20 13:55

EtreCheck Report

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Answer 5

babowa

Level 9

78,429 points

Jan 29, 2020 9:40 PM in response to leroy197

Please note: if you reinstall Catalina without erasing the data volume, it will create a second (or third) Mac HD - Data volume which will double your used space. You must follow certain rules regarding erasing the drive or you will not get rid of multiple Data volumes.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496

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Answer 6

Jan 29, 2020 9:41 AM in response to leroy197

I suggest you give EtreCheck another go. The "report" you posted in your reply above is rather unfamiliar to me and not what I expected to see. There is very little I can do to advise you with that very broad information.

It does indicate you have multiple anti-virus and anti-malware programs going simultaneously. I'll reiterate that you should remove CleanMyMac from your machine before proceeding here. You can do that by dragging the application from the Applications folder and into the trash - or select the app and press (command ⌘-delete). Then empty the trash and reboot you Mac.

After your reboot, run EtreCheck again and see if you get a report that looks more like this, only several pages longer:

This is the report you will want to include in your next reply. It will have detailed info specific to your hardware and software that will help us find an answer to your problem.

To properly copy the EtreCheck report to the clipboard, click the Share icon at the top of the report window and select Copy report.

From there, you can paste the report into the Additional text window of your reply here, just as you did previously.

d.i.

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Answer 7

Jan 29, 2020 9:04 PM in response to leroy197

Ieroy197, great job getting the EtreCheck report back into the conversation. And the pie chart is a nice bonus.

After looking at the EtreCheck report, aside from the few items mentioned by BDAqua I don't see much that is particularly revealing or that sticks out as a potential culprit regarding your drive space issue. I do see a small handful of local snapshots (3) related to Time Machine that could potentially be space hogs, but I would expect them to disappear in the course of the next TM backup process.

You do have quite a few Launch Agents and Daemons running, but I would expect them to hit your performance rather than your drive space.

And looking at your drive data I do see the numbers for your 500GB internal drive w/ 1 APFS container and 6 volumes. Specifically I see disk1s1 and disk1s5 using a total of 470GB and assume one of those is the issue.

However, it does seem to me the there is one extra volume on that internal APFS startup drive as I compare it to the Catalina install on my MBP.

My MacBook APFS boot drive volumes are as follows:

disk1s1 - Macintosh HD - data (user data, ~200GB, mounted). <– User Data

disk1s2 - Preboot

disk1s3 - Recovery

disk1s4 - VM (virtual memory space, mounted)

disk1s5 - Macintosh HD (read only, OS files, ~11GB, mounted). <– Protected OS volume

Your iMac appears to be:

disk1s1 - M******** (unknown data?, ~220GB, mounted as /Volumes/M********D). <– What's This?

disk1s2 - Preboot

disk1s3 - Recovery

disk1s4 - VM (virtual memory space, mounted)

disk1s5 - M********* - data (user data, ~251GB, mounted). <– User Data

disk1s6 - Macintosh HD (read only, OS files?, ~11GB, mounted / ). <– Protected OS volume?

I wonder if your initial upgrade to macOS Catalina went a little sideways somehow regarding the formatting (reformatting?) of the internal drive? You haven't detailed exactly how you made your upgrade or if there were problems encountered.

Anyway, this seems a little different to me, and may be best remedied with a reformat and reinstallation of Catalina.

I might advise to delete one of those APFS volumes, but I'd hesitate to say just which one is the problem – (disk1s1?).

Whatever you decide, before you take any action, please make sure that you have a current backup (or two) of your important data.

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Answer 8

BDAqua

Level 10

245,375 points

Jan 29, 2020 2:18 PM in response to leroy197

Delete these files & restart...

com.macpaw.CleanMyMac4.Agent.plist

com.macpaw.CleanMyMac4.Updater.plist

/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.fitbit.galileod.plist

If you can't find the 1st 2...

Find Any File...

http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/index.php

Hold Option or alt key when selecting Find to Find All.

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Answer 9

leroy197 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 29, 2020 3:57 PM in response to BDAqua

BDAqua, Deleted all three files. No signs of CMM that I can find any longer. Reran EtreCheck and it comes out

the same as far as hard drive utilization. However, I now only have Gatekeeper and Malwarebytes as security software.

For the record and to be clear about my disk problem, I was utilizing about 255GB of HD space before I loaded Catalina.

Immediately after loading Catalina is when the low free disk space problem showed up indicating only ~15GB of free space and has been that way ever since. I store as much as I reasonably can on my external drives so that keeps the iMac working but I know I am on borrowed time. I will take it to Apple if I have to but I cringe to thing about the ordeal that would be and would probably involve a second trip to retrieve it after they keep it two weeks...

Thank both you and d.i. for your help.

leroy197

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Answer 10

Allan Jones

Level 9

72,356 points

Jan 29, 2020 4:41 PM in response to D.I. Johnson

D.I. Johnson,

The Hosts are currently working on a know bug with the "insert Additional Text" function. It creates an html file instead of the scrollable box we were accustomed to seeing. OP probably did it properly but we were bug-bit again! This has been going on for the better part of this month.

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