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Just about to do a back up with SuperDuper in Catalina and when I open the app the only source drives displayed are called Recovery and Recovery - Data ..... no Macintosh HD
Macintosh HD is also not displayed in Finder
Help ?!?
Apple File System (APFS) divides drives into Containers which are similar to partitions.
Inside a Container you have Volumes that can be mounted independently and all share the same storage within the container.
I don't know how the containers are numbered, but I assume sequential and they don't reset. You would only see disk1 if that was the very first container created on that disk. Erasing doesn't appear to reset it.
Under Catalina, the Startup drive is split into two Volumes. The OS is on one and is mounted read only so nothing can alter it.
Your data and some apps not part of the OS are stored on the - Data volume. There are three other volumes in that container, Preboot, VM, and Recovery. Those are not normally mounted, so you don't see them.
The Finder also plays some tricks and merges the two OS and Data volumes together so they appear as a single drive.
Apple File System (APFS) divides drives into Containers which are similar to partitions.
Inside a Container you have Volumes that can be mounted independently and all share the same storage within the container.
I don't know how the containers are numbered, but I assume sequential and they don't reset. You would only see disk1 if that was the very first container created on that disk. Erasing doesn't appear to reset it.
Under Catalina, the Startup drive is split into two Volumes. The OS is on one and is mounted read only so nothing can alter it.
Your data and some apps not part of the OS are stored on the - Data volume. There are three other volumes in that container, Preboot, VM, and Recovery. Those are not normally mounted, so you don't see them.
The Finder also plays some tricks and merges the two OS and Data volumes together so they appear as a single drive.
Have you put any of your data on the Mac, yet?
They installed the OS on a Volume they named Recovery (talk about a bad choice)
You can name the volume anything you want. The default is Macintosh HD.
Boot into Recovery (cmd-R on restart, not the Recovery volume they made) and use Disk Utility to remove all of the Recovery volumes you show in your screen shot.
Add a Volume and name it whatever you want.
Quit Disk Utility and Reinstall macOS from the main Recovery window.
Probably a better option is to Boot into Internet Recovery (cmd-Opt-R) and erase the device completely. Then reinstall macOS.
To erase completely, in Disk Utility select "Show All Devices" from the View button.
Select the actual drive device which should be at the top of the list.
Click the Erase button.
Use GUID Partition Map and APFS for the format.
Name the Volume anything you'd like to use (Macintosh HD if you want).
Then, reinstall macOS.
Can you Migrate again?
In Disk Utility, select "Show All Devices" from the View menu, then take a screen shot of that. I don't know why Disk Utility is showing the volume between Recovery and Recovery - Data. That's why I think you should erase the Mac and start over.
In Catalina, you should have two Volumes, the OS is on one, and the one with the - Data suffix is your data.
The OS Volume should be about 11 GB, so that makes sense.
The startup drive can be named anything at all. It doesn't have to be named "Macintosh HD."
The person that sold it to you named the startup drive "Recovery," probably to try to be funny so when someone has to explain how to use Recovery, it will be confusing for you.
Here's a screenshot of what i see in Finder and Disk Utility
I bought the iMac off someone who said they wiped it and put a fresh install on it.
I'm confused.
The first drive called Recovery has 11.25 GB used up and a Finder icon next to it and the second Recovery Drive has 265 GB used and a Home icon next to it
The Recovery Data drive says 1MB only
Yes I have. I used migration assistant to transfer all my stuff from my old iMac.
I'm really confused as to what to do and didn't quite understand your response. Sorry.
This is my first time with a Fusion drive and I'm not au fait with it all. I was expecting just a single drive to show as Macintosh HD like I had before.
Yeah I have an external drive with a bootable copy of my original iMac on it.
I decided to go down your recommended route and am currently Boot into Internet Recovery (cmd-Opt-R) and erase the device completely section ( I'd rather just start again otherwise it's too confusing )
I will post back again once that bit is done.
I really appreciate the help Barney, I cannot tell you how much.
Quit Disk Utility and select Reinstall macOS from the main Recovery panel.
Choose Macintosh HD as the location to install.
Note which OS it is going to install when you get there. If it is something before Catalina, you will likely need to quit the installer, go back to Disk Utility, Erase and use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) instead of APFS.
It is possible it will try to install what shipped on that Mac. You'd then need to upgrade to Catalina afterwards.
If it tries to install Mojave, that may work on APFS.
Started the Reinstall, and it is macOS Catalina.
I was a little confused by it showing "Container disk2" instead of either nothing or disk1
Have to admit I'm not sure what they refer to.
Any search I did in Google showed disk1
Ok I selected the top most Apple HDD and gave it a name of Macintosh HD, APFS format and GUID Partition Map.
Disk utility now shows
APPLE HDD > Container disk2 > Macintosh HD
Thanks for that, that makes it clearer to some degree.
Many thank for the advise and help Barney
Very much appreciated
Back up - Where is the drive
