Disk Partition Removal

KV2808 wrote:

There are two Macintosh HD's, which one should I remove?

If you have Two Macintosh HD - Data

from Disk Utility.app you can see the mount point—

One will be mounted at /System/Volumes/Data this is the one you want to keep,

The other will be mounted at /Volumes and you can simply use the " - "to delete it.

These are all required macOS APFS volumes for Big Sur.

KV2808 wrote:

I have a bunch of partitions all of which I want to remove (I am not sure which is the standard amount so I am going to send a screenshot of all the partitions in my drive). I need someone to help me get rid of them all except for the ones which should standardly be there.

Typically what you see on a clean install of macOS Big Sur:

ref: About the read-only system volume in macOS Catalina - Apple ...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210650


Add, delete, or erase APFS volumes in Disk Utility on Mac ...

https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/add-erase-or-delete-apfs-volumes-dskua9e6a110/mac

I will add—You see more of the big picture if you choose Disk Utility>View>Show all Devices

Big Sur uses a “snapshot” of the current system for its (SSV) Signed System Volume, as you see in the list. This is the new normal as well. This would be the 'Macintosh HD'

Big Sur since it loads the System from a locked Macintosh HD...

Big Sur use this snapshot of the current system for its SSL (Signed System Volume ) w/ strong cryptographic protections to store system content .

Previous to Big Sur:

If you are running Big Sur, then I think the second one mounted at "/Volumes/Macintosh HD 2" is the one you want to keep because it shows the "com.apple.os.update" volume as part of it with the drop down box. This is a new volume specifically used by Big Sur.

I think you want to delete the first "Macintosh HD" volume that does not have a drop down arrow and shown in your screenshots as mounted at "/Volumes/Macintosh HD 1". Keep in mind each time you reboot these designations may be different. Make sure there is no data you need from this volume before deleting it as it contains an older version of macOS and may contain a user account(s) as well (hard to tell since we don't know exactly how you ended up in this situation since there a couple of possibilities --- I know it is easy to happen because Apple's documentation doesn't really explain things very well).

Before deleting anything make sure you have a good backup of all your data. Confirm all the data is indeed included in your backup. Once the volume is deleted any data contained within it will be gone for good.

If you now have one "Macintosh HD" and one "Macintosh HD - Data" volume it should be correct for Big Sur (as far as I can tell without being hands on with the Mac).

KV2808 wrote:

So this should be it, correct?

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/fceee57c-f7f2-4077-a6f7-f2942960b17f

Looks great —good computing KV2808 !