My 2012 Mini start up hard disk volume suddenly added a data volume - what is that? What do I do with it? They'er both APFS. Devices: disk 1s5 and the Data disk 1s1. I've never encountered a Data Disk before.
Mac mini, macOS 10.15
That, my friend, is a by-product of the new APFS disk format used by Macs.
It's normal now. Not to fret.
Macintosh HD is a read-only protected APFS volume for macOS system files. There’s nothing you can do with it short of erasing the drive and all the data on it. That would be bad!
Macintosh HD - Data is the volume where the user accounts and user data live. Files and folders on this drive may be freely managed by the user accounts that own them.
Finder always displays both of these volumes together as a single drive named Macintosh HD. In Finder, the default volume that you are usually interacting with is Macintosh HD - Data. Finder never reveals the full name of the -data volume to you. But Disk Utility and Terminal will.
For example, in Finder, when you click > Go menu > Applications (⇧⌘A), the window that opens is a representative of the folder located at Macintosh HD/Applications/. It's the default location for all the applications available to all the users of the Mac. This is where your applications are actually going.
But the applications folder you see in your Home folder is located at Macintosh HD - Data/Users/yourusername/Applications. It lives on the -Data volume of your APFS installation.
It's a different animal than HFS+ format used in previous versions of macOS.
There's more to learn about APFS, but thinking about all of this makes my head explode. 🤯
That, my friend, is a by-product of the new APFS disk format used by Macs.
It's normal now. Not to fret.
Macintosh HD is a read-only protected APFS volume for macOS system files. There’s nothing you can do with it short of erasing the drive and all the data on it. That would be bad!
Macintosh HD - Data is the volume where the user accounts and user data live. Files and folders on this drive may be freely managed by the user accounts that own them.
Finder always displays both of these volumes together as a single drive named Macintosh HD. In Finder, the default volume that you are usually interacting with is Macintosh HD - Data. Finder never reveals the full name of the -data volume to you. But Disk Utility and Terminal will.
For example, in Finder, when you click > Go menu > Applications (⇧⌘A), the window that opens is a representative of the folder located at Macintosh HD/Applications/. It's the default location for all the applications available to all the users of the Mac. This is where your applications are actually going.
But the applications folder you see in your Home folder is located at Macintosh HD - Data/Users/yourusername/Applications. It lives on the -Data volume of your APFS installation.
It's a different animal than HFS+ format used in previous versions of macOS.
There's more to learn about APFS, but thinking about all of this makes my head explode. 🤯
Thank You!
You're welcome. 🙂
2012 Mini startup volume split into 2 adding a data volume. What is that?
