New install Big Sur show two Volumes named ...Data & Update

Question

Level 2

287 points

New install Big Sur show two Volumes named ...Data & Update

Hi and Happy New year to all!. Installed Big Sur on a new formatted external 500GB SSD and initially all was fine, that is until I restarted from the new Big Sur external SSD to my iMac's internal HD (2007 27" iMac running OSX 10.13.6 High Sierra. Once restarted in High Sierra, I noticed two volume images from my external SSD with Big Sur, one named ..Data the other Update. I cannot use them as startup drives because they are not recognized in System Preferences > Startup Disk.

I formatted the new external SSD and installed Big Sur without issues. I decided to give Big Sur a test drive before committing it to my iMac's internal drive to determine compatibility with several Pro Video & Photo Editors.

Hopefully there's a simple fix for this.

Thanks for suggestions for a solution

Posted on Jan 2, 2022 11:54 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

babowa

Level 9

78,163 points

Jan 2, 2022 1:38 PM in response to Pete Dubaj

First, here are the requirements for Big Sur:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211238

A 2007 iMac is simply not compatible and cannot boot or run BS.

Second, yes , BS devides the drive into two volumes; the OS will be on a read only volume called Macintosh HD and the Data volume will contain your user and other files you will actually have read/write access to. If you can get it to work, it'll be a miracle.

Reply

Answer 2

Pete Dubaj Author

Level 2

287 points

Jan 2, 2022 1:49 PM in response to babowa

Thanks for the link. I'll try it but now that I know boot to the external using the old Option key at restart or startup I'm a happy camper. Now for installing some of my apps to see how they run on Big Sur.

Thanks!

Reply

Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

113,172 points

Jan 2, 2022 1:59 PM in response to Pete Dubaj

Big Sur and later create several Utility volumes along with a System Volume and Data Volume.

Those are Preboot, VM, Recovery, and Update.

When you boot into another OS, you will see the Data volume mounted, and sometimes the Update volume.

So, there isn’t any problem.

Reply

Answer 4

DonH49

Level 6

16,704 points

Jan 2, 2022 12:43 PM in response to Pete Dubaj

High Sierra is not going to recognize things for Big Sur or Monterey as you would think it should. Use the option key to restart and your Big Sur volume should show to select.

Reply