This is my setup.
Below see what my drive(s) look like.
They are the same physical drive.
I do not even know how I split it up. I called the small drive "shell" for lack of a better word.
It is a 1Tb fusion drive.
If anyone knows how to re-combine them safely, please let me know.
Thanks,
Al
iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 10.13
Do not mess with this. Since Catalina, when you use Disk Utility to access your hard drive, you will see two of them (depending on how you click on the icons). The first (iMac Hard Disk) is a "division", or volume, of your existing hard drive where all of the Apple installs files are located. Is a read only volume which we can not change or mess with. The second volume is where everything else is located. These are the files, fonts, etc. that we have installed. This is the new normal. It is a wonderful security protection feature.
If that "shell" is your Mac HD - Data (which is the second volume), then it should not be showing on your desktop. Having a fusion drive makes it not possible for me to help any further since my only experience with one of those was short lived and very painful (I returned the iMac within a week).
However, do take a look at your Disk Utility app and see what/how it is listed there. Worst case: go to recovery, erase the drive and reinstall. Make sure you do have a valid up to date backup first.
Afterthought: If the second drive is "very small", it could also be your SSD drive as part of the fusion drive?
This seems to be the description of my problem exactly. I had suspected that the two drives showing were the fusion part and the spinning iron part of the same fusion drive, but I nothing would come up in a web search or a search of this site because I could not phrase the search correctly. Thank you so much for taking the time to help me!!!!!
I will do what the article says to do tomorrow and I will let you know how it worked.
I followed the instructions on the article you pointed me towards and everything worked perfectly!!!
My Mac even boots faster, about 61 seconds, now that it is taking full advantage of the SSD part of the Fusion drive. I know, some are a lot faster, but 61 seconds is MUCH faster than it was.
Thank you again for solving a problem that has been nagging at me for the last year!
Al
You're welcome. Good luck.
It appears you have a split Fusion drive.
You're welcome. Glad to help.
The main drive of my iMac seems to be split into two drives. One large and one very small.
