Catalina and "Extra" Hard Drive: Want the "Data" drive on my desktop, not the one with the OS

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Catalina and "Extra" Hard Drive: Want the "Data" drive on my desktop, not the one with the OS

Got Catalina installed.

How can I have the data drive on my desktop that goes right to the data rather than having the other hard drive? I see no purpose of having a hard drive on my desktop if I can not write/copy files to it. I'd much rather have the Data hard drive so I can open it directly.

Also, when making an alias of the Data drive, it does not in fact go to the Data drive but to the systems drive and you have to negotiate to the Data drive from there.

Any way to just have the Data drive on the desktop?

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on Feb 8, 2020 8:47 AM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

151,905 points

Feb 8, 2020 10:15 AM in response to paulconradphotography

If you already have a complete backup before you upgrade to Catalina, then do not do another backup now that it is installed. Instead we will want to use your original backup set after doing a "clean" install of Catalina.

I suggest that you boot up in Recovery Mode, then first erase your Mac's internal drive. Then use the mode to install Catalina. Once installed and working properly, go ahead and restore your data.

Ref: How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - Apple Support

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Answer 2

babowa

Level 9

78,411 points

Feb 8, 2020 10:44 AM in response to paulconradphotography

Please note:

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

If you do not follow the steps here, you will wind up with two Mac HD - Data volumes.

And, you still cannot put the Data drive on the desktop; it is not designed to be. You should only see one Mac HD; of course, you can create any folder in your User folder and have that show up, but the Data volume is part of your HD and not a separate entity.

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Answer 3

Feb 8, 2020 9:41 AM in response to Tesserax

"If properly installed, and with this Finder preference enabled, you should only see the Macintosh HD icon on the Desktop ... and it should not take you to the read-only volume. Are you saying that this is not the case? If so, then something went wrong during the upgrade."

This is not the case. The HD icon takes me to the read-only volume. From there I have to navigate to the "data drive."

Also, the icon the system is using an old, old, old icon from a computer I have not had for 6 years. See the icon for "Pablo's Data."

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Answer 4

babowa

Level 9

78,411 points

Feb 8, 2020 8:55 AM in response to paulconradphotography

Catalina has two volumes; the Data drive is invisible (except in Disk Utility) and they both work in unison. They are not separate partitions, they are volumes within one drive. So, no, I would not recommend trying to separate them and am quite sure it would not be possible or result in a totally corrupt install. Let the OS take care of itself.

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Answer 5

Tesserax

Level 10

151,905 points

Feb 8, 2020 9:17 AM in response to paulconradphotography

If you have "Hard disks" enabled on the Finder Preferences > General tab, then you should find your Mac's system drive, appear on the Desktop. By default, this should be labeled Macintosh HD. New with macOS Catalina, there are actually two logical volumes created in a singular APFS container. This would be true for either a new installation or during an upgrade process from an earlier macOS version. However, Catalina treats them both as a singular entity.

If properly installed, and with this Finder preference enabled, you should only see the Macintosh HD icon on the Desktop ... and it should not take you to the read-only volume. Are you saying that this is not the case? If so, then something went wrong during the upgrade.

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Answer 6

Feb 8, 2020 10:07 AM in response to Tesserax

Installed in place. Not an update. My data was backed up. Catalina put the data still on my computer into the new Data segment

And if I do a full install, should it be 100% clean?

Should I do another install?

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Answer 7

Feb 8, 2020 10:36 AM in response to Tesserax

"If you already have a complete backup before you upgrade to Catalina, then do not do another backup now that it is installed. Instead we will want to use your original backup set after doing a "clean" install of Catalina."

My most recent backup is from this morning after Catalina was installed. Will that make a difference?

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Answer 8

Tesserax

Level 10

151,905 points

Feb 8, 2020 10:01 AM in response to paulconradphotography

Did you perform an upgrade to Catalina or did a "clean" install? If the latter, did you then restore your data from a backup?

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Catalina and "Extra" Hard Drive: Want the "Data" drive on my desktop, not the one with the OS

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