MacOS Monterey - Two hard drive icons on desktop

>> Has there ever been a failed or aborted installation of Monterey or a previous version of macOS like Big Sur or Catalina?

Nope.

>> Open Disk Utilities >> View >> View ALL Attached Drives.

>> Please provide a Screen Shot of what is presented and post the screen shot using the 2nd to last icon called Insert Image.

Unfortunately, I already followed the advice in the first response so the 2nd HD is gone for now. If/when it reappears I will get a screen shot as you requested.

OK, the problem has reappeared. Here's the two drives on the desktop:

Here's the windows when I open the two drives in the Finder. One is my normal contents, the other is empty:

Here's what I see in Disk Utility:

And here's the output from the Terminal command:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0

1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     314.6 MB   disk0s1

2:                 Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk1⁩         1.0 TB     disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):

#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +1.0 TB     disk1

                                 Physical Store disk0s2

   1:                APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD - Data⁩     244.5 GB   disk1s1

   2:                APFS Volume ⁨Preboot⁩                 654.0 MB   disk1s2

   3:                APFS Volume ⁨Recovery⁩                1.1 GB     disk1s3

   4:                APFS Volume ⁨VM⁩                      2.1 GB     disk1s4

   5:                APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD⁩            15.8 GB    disk1s5

   6:              APFS Snapshot ⁨com.apple.os.update-...⁩ 15.8 GB    disk1s5s1

Any thoughts?

-Dan

>> Boot into safe mode, then reboot

I gave that a try. No way to know if it worked yet. As mentioned, a simple reboot removes it for a while so after booting into safe mode and then rebooting it is, of course, gone for now. I tend to leave my laptop on all the time and just shut the lid when not using it. It may go for weeks between reboots. So it's hard to know how long after a reboot the 2nd hard drive icon appears. Could be days, could be weeks. I'll have to wait and see what happens.

>> Since Catalina there is two volume structure. You can turn off seeing these on the Desktop if is a glitch—

>> Finder >Preferences>General>

Well, that hides the problem but doesn't fix it. That would remove both HD icons and I only want to remove the extra one. I like having the real HD icon on my desktop.

>> If at some point you did an reinstall, it may have not been complete erase/re-install can lead to a ghost...

I haven't done any reinstalls since I've owned the laptop. Just the usual system updates as they become available.

I can't see what's going on in Disk Utility because, as mentioned above, I've already done the temporary fix for the problem by rebooting. All looks good at the moment so I'll report back if it reappears.

-Dan

>> It has been suggested to run the Terminal Command to give us a good look at the

>> drive structure but alas, that has not yet been attempted by the user

Well, as I mentioned above, the problem is not currently showing itself. Doesn't make sense to me to spend time troubleshooting a problem that's not there.

But if you think it will help, here it is:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0

   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     314.6 MB   disk0s1

   2:                 Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk1⁩         1.0 TB     disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +1.0 TB     disk1

                                 Physical Store disk0s2

   1:                APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD - Data⁩     241.0 GB   disk1s1

   2:                APFS Volume ⁨Preboot⁩                 654.0 MB   disk1s2

   3:                APFS Volume ⁨Recovery⁩                1.1 GB     disk1s3

   4:                APFS Volume ⁨VM⁩                      1.1 GB     disk1s4

   5:                APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD⁩            15.8 GB    disk1s5

   6:              APFS Snapshot ⁨com.apple.os.update-...⁩ 15.8 GB    disk1s5s1

Again, if the problem shows up, I'll report back.

-Dan

Well it turns out I'm a throwback as well! :-) I like having the disk on the desktop. But as long as seeing 2 is not going to cause any problems, I'll just ignore the 2nd one. Thanks for taking a look!

-Dan