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Big Sur has an "OS Update" snapshot volume under the Big Sur volume. Do I need it?

I performed a clean install of Big Sur by creating a new volume called Big Sur within Catalina, and then installing Big Sur to it from a thumbdrive. It's been working great.


But now I have a volume under my Big Sur volume called com.apple.os.update-GUID. I don't recall seeing a volume like this in previous versions of macOS. Is this a new feature of Big Sur, or is this a leftover from how I installed Big Sur? If it's a leftover, is it safe to delete?

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 11.0

Posted on Nov 18, 2020 5:58 AM

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Posted on Nov 18, 2020 6:54 AM

The Update volume is a normal part of Big Sur.

Apple used to stage updates in /Library/Updates folder, but it now appears they have started staging in an APFS Volume, instead. There still is an Updates folder in Library, so it may be related to something else, perhaps OS updates as opposed to other updates.


I have no way of knowing, but I don't think they intended to show that in Disk Utility.

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Big Sur has an "OS Update" snapshot volume under the Big Sur volume. Do I need it?

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