You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Random Partitions On Disk Utility

In the picture below, my mac is shared by 5 volumes. Why is this the case? Along with that, why do I have a "Container disk1" and two volumes under that("Macintosh HD" and ""Macintosh HD - Data").

Also, when I try to partition my mac, it won't let me add another volume, stating that the minimum size must be 195 GB. Why does this happen?

Posted on May 23, 2020 8:32 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 24, 2020 7:15 AM

A little bit Catalina and a lot APFS.


APFS has Containers that contain Volumes. Containers are like partitions.

Volumes are virtual divisions of a Container, but all of the Volumes in a container share the same total storage space.


Catalina separates the OS from your Data and third-party stuff. The Macintosh HD volume is the OS and is mounted Read Only so nothing can modify it.

Macintosh HD - Data contains everything else and is mounted read/write.


The three other volumes in Container disk1 are:

Preboot - for booting up

VM - Virtual Memory

Recovery - What used to be the Recovery partition. It's now in a Volume under APFS.

Similar questions

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 24, 2020 7:15 AM in response to advait288

A little bit Catalina and a lot APFS.


APFS has Containers that contain Volumes. Containers are like partitions.

Volumes are virtual divisions of a Container, but all of the Volumes in a container share the same total storage space.


Catalina separates the OS from your Data and third-party stuff. The Macintosh HD volume is the OS and is mounted Read Only so nothing can modify it.

Macintosh HD - Data contains everything else and is mounted read/write.


The three other volumes in Container disk1 are:

Preboot - for booting up

VM - Virtual Memory

Recovery - What used to be the Recovery partition. It's now in a Volume under APFS.

Random Partitions On Disk Utility

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.