How to delete redundant disks on disk utility?

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Level 1

4 points

How to delete redundant disks on disk utility?

I reinstalled my OS a couple of times and ended up with many redundant disks as you can see in the picture (Terminal window on Internet Recovery Protocol):

I want to get rid of them.

Of course, I tried the following diskutil commands:

eraseDisk : the command only erases the content of the "disk" but not the disk itself.
mergePartitions : tried merging all redundant partitions into one but didn't work.

Note:

I didn't use FileVault.
This is the Internet Recovery utility from the Monterey version.

Any ideas?

MacBook Pro

Posted on Mar 14, 2022 7:54 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10

133,003 points

Mar 14, 2022 8:09 AM in response to PaulMW69

When you boot into Internet Recovery, the minimal system creates over 25 RAM-disks, of type disk-image, all modest in size, and uses them to hold temporary items. This leaves the boot drive completely free to be Repaired, Erased, or whatever needs to happen.

Trying to remove them will crash Recovery.

Those RAM-Disks are not permanent. Just restart into regular mode or Safe mode, and they will be gone.

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Answer 2

PaulMW69 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 14, 2022 9:30 AM in response to PaulMW69

Thanks fellas. But first time I used Disk Utility, there weren't that many disks: had 4-5, then 13 and now 21, see pic below.

It does seem the OS is creating more & more redundant disks every time.

And I am just worried having too many of them will eventually crash the Base System (when using the Internet Recovery Protocol for the Xth time).

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Answer 3

Mar 14, 2022 8:16 AM in response to PaulMW69

In that report, your "real" disk is Disk0, size about 256GB, and it holds a GUID partition Map, an EFI partition, and a container-disk.

Synthesized inside the container-disk is disk2, which contains the components of your APFS drive.

Look closely at the SIZES of those items.

Since diskutil list is recomputed at every startup, when you start up without Internet recovery active, your APFS Volume will likely move to a different disk number.

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Answer 4

Mar 14, 2022 9:40 AM in response to PaulMW69

Internet recovery (and possibly disk-based recovery, and maybe even Installer) creates these every time it runs, and they are removed when it is done.

Those very small RAM-Disks are not permanent.

Just restart into regular mode or Safe mode, and they will be gone.

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How to delete redundant disks on disk utility?

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