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When I view "About My Mac" it shows that I have 87GB available of a 500GB. But when I view the Macintosh Data partition using the Finder, it shows zero files. How am I supposed to make sense of this? Are my documents, videos, and music supposed to be stored on the Macintosh Data partition?
I'm using Big Sur.
Thank you.
iMac Line (2012 and Later)
When I clicked the minus icon, a scary warning came up that said all data will be deleted and this can not be undone. I don't get why this volume is supposedly only using 934KB, and yet there also seems to be roughly 500GB of data in 6 other volumes. I don't know what those other volumes are, so I'm not sure how to proceed. Obviously I don't want to risk losing data, unless I know what that data is.
Thanks for helping!
That's not your Data volume. It is an orphaned Data volume, probably from a reinstall where you didn't remove the old one.
Open Disk Utility and select each - Data volume.
Look at the Mount Point in the info pane.
The volume mounted at /System/Volumes/Data is the correct one.
The one volume mounted at /Volumes is the orphan (and the one showing up in the Storage display and the Sidebar).
What you have selected is not a Data Volume.
The startup volume is now "sealed" in an APFS Snapshot. That is what is booted, not Macintosh HD directly.
My guess is the orphan Data drive is listed at the top (I'm not sure why it is above the startup volume).
That Volume is inside the same Container as your Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data. That's why you see "Other Volumes" with 447GB of data. About 20GB are on Macintosh HD and the rest is on Macintosh HD - Data (the good one).
If you select "Show All Devices" from the View Popup menu, you will see all of the volumes contained in Container Disk X.
An APFS Container is like a partition, but it is divided up by Volumes. All of the Volumes in the container share the same storage space.
So, you have a 500GB drive with one APFS Container (of roughly the same size). All of the volumes, Macintosh HD, Macintosh HD - Data, your other Macintosh HD - Data, and a few system volumes all share the same 500GB of storage, taking whatever they need.
Here is what things look like in my Disk Utility utility app. It looks like the orphan one is not even mounted at all. How should I get rid of it?
Thanks!
Here is a new screenshot showing the drive listed at the top as selected. Thank you for your help on this.
So, in other words, it's safe to delete this orphan volume without destroying the other volumes in the one APFS Container? Just want to make sure, this is kinda scary.
Yes, that is the orphan as you can see it is mounted at /Volumes
And how do I get rid of this orphan? Or should I just leave it alone?
And how do I get rid of this orphan? Or should I just leave it alone?
I failed to post that.
Select it in Disk Utility and click the Remove Volume button ( – ).
It just says it will delete everything on it. You said it had nothing on it, so deleting nothing should not be a problem.
Why is my Macintosh Data partition completely empty?
