Question: Q: I restored my MacBook to factory settings, but my HD is still showing 182GB of my storage is being used.

That is what I did to restore my Mac. I first erased the HD and then reinstalled the OS. When I set up the computer from a new OS state and loved in with my Apple ID it showed that 182gb of space was being used even though when I click on manage data no files even come close to this about of data. The 180gb folder that was on my desktop before I restored the computer was referenced by iCloud when I finally logged back in after restoring the unit. I deleted those files from my iCloud drive. I wonder if the greyed out are of the drive listed for this 182gb on my HD is merely a placeholder referencing these file from iCloud?

I did that. I guess the greyed out part is 156gb of data and is listed as Other Volumes In Container. Below is a screenshot of what is shown when I click on the Manage button. I'm new to Mac OS.

No, it's not an external hard drive. After reading about this Other Volumes in Container issue it sounds like it is a virtual part of the HD added to the Container as a backup of what I had in case something failed when reinstalling the OS.

How do I get rid of this "data"

Huh, I'm sorry. What does this mean?

I figured it out. There was a third volume on the disk utility that contained this Other Volumes in the Container data. I had to mount that volume. Then it allowed me to delete the data on that volume. Now all of my extra HD space is freed up.