Ghost volumes left in Disk Utility, and some Time Machine weirdness

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Ghost volumes left in Disk Utility, and some Time Machine weirdness

I have been having trouble with my Time Machine external USB drive lately. I noticed it was formatted as the older "journaled" type instead of the newer APFS volume, like the Mac internal SSD. So I erased and tried reformatting the Time Machine volume as APFS. After reformatting it says it was APFS, and when I woke up this morning Time Machine reported it had finished backing up.

We'll see how it goes. I've reformatted before and after a few days it complained it couldn't backup again.

One issue is that the old Time Machine volume, Tao Three, remains in Disk Utility.

This is what Tao Four, the new Time Machine volume looks like.

So another oddity is that I see it says it is extended journaled even though I reformatted it as APFS, like my CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) volume is, and it originally reported it as APFS.

Currently Time Machine says it is up-to-date with the latest backup a few minutes ago. But why doesn't it say APFS? And how do I get rid fo the ghost Tao Three volume?

I'm running the latest Catalina 10.15.7 on my late 2013 MBP 13 inch retina.

Thanks,

doug

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 28, 2020 2:46 PM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

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125,442 points

Oct 28, 2020 3:15 PM in response to Doug Lerner2

Time Machine can’t use APFS, and I have no idea if they will make it capable.

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Answer 2

Doug Lerner2 Author

Level 4

1,417 points

Oct 28, 2020 3:28 PM in response to Barney-15E

So Time Machine forced a reformatting of Tao Four then?

OK. In that case, the remaining mystery is why Tao Three is still hanging around in Disk Utility even though I erased and and created Tao Four.

Thanks,

doug

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

125,442 points

Oct 28, 2020 5:05 PM in response to Doug Lerner2

They seem to be on different physical disks, disk5 and disk9.

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Answer 4

Doug Lerner2 Author

Level 4

1,417 points

Oct 28, 2020 5:32 PM in response to Barney-15E

There's only one physical disk there though. Disk utility also reports my internal volume Mac HD with a device name disk1s5 but Mac HD - Data as disk1s1. But it must be the same drive.

doug

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Answer 5

Doug Lerner2 Author

Level 4

1,417 points

Oct 28, 2020 5:45 PM in response to Barney-15E

Well, anyway, it appears to be a ghost volume. There is no disk there. Do you know if there is a way of removing it from appearing in Disk Utility?

Thanks,

doug

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Answer 6

Doug Lerner2 Author

Level 4

1,417 points

Oct 28, 2020 5:53 PM in response to Barney-15E

I'm not sure that's right either though. For example, my CCC drive is disk6s2. So the device would be disk6. Then there is CCC data, which is disk6s1. Alright so far. It's a segment on the same drive.

But then there is Misc HD, disk4s3. It's a volume created on the same CCC drive for use by BackBlaze backups as a buffer disk because my internal drive was too small. Why is the device name different? It's the only disk4 listed. But there is no separate drive for it. It's a partition on the CCC drive.

doug

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Answer 7

Barney-15E

Level 10

125,442 points

Oct 28, 2020 5:42 PM in response to Doug Lerner2

The physical disk is the diskX part. The part after the s is a subdivision the physical disk.

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Answer 8

Barney-15E

Level 10

125,442 points

Oct 28, 2020 6:21 PM in response to Doug Lerner2

I haven’t partitioned a drive in perhaps two decades, so a partition may be listed as diskX. I don’t remember that being the case, but perhaps it was.

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Ghost volumes left in Disk Utility, and some Time Machine weirdness

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