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snapshot and other items in Disk Utility

Hi guys!


I have installed BigSur 11.6 and I wanted to create a partition for bootcamp.

Installing bootcamp didn't went well. So I started to search for solutions, but this is not today's topic.


I opened Disk Utility and I found something I don't recall I've ever seen before:

Macintosh HD is greed out and active is a local snapshot (com.apple.os.update.......)

Why is a snapshot active? shouldn't be the Macintosh HD the active partition?

is this normal?

I normally keep the backups on an Airport Time Machine Unit.


second question: what's the VM / Preeboot / 1 Not Mounted volumes? Is it normal their presence?


Thanks for your help.

Marco

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Sep 14, 2021 9:07 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 14, 2021 9:17 PM

I opened Disk Utility and I found something I don't recall I've ever seen before:

That’s because it didn’t exist until now. Not only is the startup volume read-only, but it is also a “sealed” snapshot of that volume.

Second question: what's the VM / Preeboot / 1 Not Mounted volumes? Is it normal their presence?

VM is Virtual Memory used to swap out RAM to disk. It has always existed, except it used to be in a hidden folder. The VM volume is now mounted at that folder’s location.

Preboot is things it needs to boot the OS.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 14, 2021 9:17 PM in response to Asialimarco

I opened Disk Utility and I found something I don't recall I've ever seen before:

That’s because it didn’t exist until now. Not only is the startup volume read-only, but it is also a “sealed” snapshot of that volume.

Second question: what's the VM / Preeboot / 1 Not Mounted volumes? Is it normal their presence?

VM is Virtual Memory used to swap out RAM to disk. It has always existed, except it used to be in a hidden folder. The VM volume is now mounted at that folder’s location.

Preboot is things it needs to boot the OS.

Sep 14, 2021 9:53 PM in response to Barney-15E

Hi Barney. many thanks for your reply.

ok so it means that my disk is looking fine and as it should be. Nice.


Now... I'm struggling on installing windows with bootcamp.


I have downloaded the ISO file from Microsoft. Bootcamp starts, it downloads the supporting files.

at the space allocation i choose 128Gb for bootcamp (I have 1Tb) and then the system reboot, windows logo come up, start the first section of the setup where you can choose the language, windows version, keyboard layout etc.... once this is finish it starts to copying the windows installation files and there it stops, saying that it can't find the partition or volume specified on the <ImageInstall> (seems it can't see the partition BOOTCAMP.

at that point I can only press ok. The Mac reboots into MacOS )taking a while.

when MacOS is up, I can see the partition BOOTCAMP (empty) on my desktop and in Disk Utility.

If I restart Bootcamp , it prompts to delete the BOOTCAMP partition and join the space with the primary partition.


tried many times, same error every time.

I don't know what else to do.


KR

Marco

snapshot and other items in Disk Utility

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