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User profile for user: shreejeetsahay
shreejeetsahay Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Which disk should be erased for Factory reset?

While doing factory reset on my machine for troubleshooting of one support ticket, I chose Macintosh HD internal volume and didn't touch Macintosh hd-data while erasing data in disk utility, and now after reinstalling os on macintosh hd, i see macintosh hd-data has all the data which was for user before factory reset and no new data is being written to it.


Which volume should be erased from disk utility while factory reset- Macintosh HD or Macintosh HD-Data?

Posted on Dec 20, 2020 11:42 PM

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User profile for user: HWTech
HWTech
User level: Level 9
60,650 points

Posted on Dec 21, 2020 9:17 PM

It sounds like you downgraded macOS from Catalina/Big Sur to Mojave or High Sierra which only had a single "Macintosh HD" volume. If you have all your data backed up, then you should be able to remove the "Macintosh HD - Data" volume (assuming my assumption here is correct about downgrading macOS). Only do this if you have a good backup of your data.


Otherwise, start over and erase the whole physical drive instead of just the "Macintosh HD" volume. See this article for instructions on how to erase the whole physical drive since recent versions of Disk Utility hide the physical drives from view now.

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/erase-and-reformat-a-storage-device-dskutl14079/mac

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User profile for user: HWTech
HWTech
User level: Level 9
60,650 points

Dec 21, 2020 9:17 PM in response to shreejeetsahay

It sounds like you downgraded macOS from Catalina/Big Sur to Mojave or High Sierra which only had a single "Macintosh HD" volume. If you have all your data backed up, then you should be able to remove the "Macintosh HD - Data" volume (assuming my assumption here is correct about downgrading macOS). Only do this if you have a good backup of your data.


Otherwise, start over and erase the whole physical drive instead of just the "Macintosh HD" volume. See this article for instructions on how to erase the whole physical drive since recent versions of Disk Utility hide the physical drives from view now.

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/erase-and-reformat-a-storage-device-dskutl14079/mac

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Which disk should be erased for Factory reset?

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