Volumes Folder?

Question

Volumes Folder?

My Mac started telling me I'm running low on space so I started comparing what's there now with what I had a few weeks ago, as shown in a backup to an external drive. Aside from a few easy deletions which mostly solved the immediate storage issue, I noticed that I now have a 7GB "Volumes" folder under System where the backup shows none.

So I'm curious what this folder is for and how it could have appeared suddenly. I've learned not to delete anything in System without checking for advice, and even then very cautiously, but would appreciate suggestions.

Thanks

MacBook Air

Posted on Jun 23, 2022 1:29 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 24, 2022 11:15 AM in response to Peter Roussak

These are managed by the system, and you should not delete them or change them.

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Answer 2

Niel

Community+ 2025

Level 10

741,323 points

Jun 23, 2022 1:34 PM in response to Peter Roussak

The /Volumes/ folder is the normal location for secondary partitions and drives to be attached to the filesystem. If there's a regular folder inside, choose Go to Folder from the Finder's Go menu, drag it to the desktop, and then go through it.

(220341)

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Answer 3

Jun 23, 2022 2:57 PM in response to Niel

Thanks for the quick response. There are three folders inside Volumes - VM, Macintosh HD, and Preboot. VM is the largest, with files called things like "sleepimage" and "swapfile". I don't know what any of these are for, and I'm very hesitant to do anything to them without knowing more, including why the Volumes folder suddenly appeared when it wasn't there two weeks ago.

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Answer 4

Owl-53

Level 10

102,565 points

Jun 25, 2022 3:55 AM in response to Peter Roussak

The normal look of the Internal Drive in Big Sur should be like below.

Using the Terminal command diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme 251.0 GB disk0

1: Apple_APFS_ISC ⁨⁩ 524.3 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk3⁩ 245.1 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_APFS_Recovery ⁨⁩ 5.4 GB disk0s3

/dev/disk3 (synthesized):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: APFS Container Scheme - +245.1 GB disk3

Physical Store disk0s2

1: APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD⁩ 15.2 GB disk3s1

2: APFS Snapshot ⁨com.apple.os.update-...⁩ 15.2 GB disk3s1s1

3: APFS Volume ⁨Preboot⁩ 678.7 MB disk3s2

4: APFS Volume ⁨Recovery⁩ 789.6 MB disk3s3

5: APFS Volume ⁨Data⁩ 16.9 GB disk3s5

6: APFS Volume ⁨VM⁩ 20.5 KB disk3s6

And none of these Volumes should be touched under any circumstance

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Volumes Folder?

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