First Aid Warning: apfs_fs_count is not valid

Hey Tim,

These are great questions! If First Aid was able to complete the process and does not report it couldn't, then you do not need to erase your hard drive. If you complete First Aid again, does the same alert appear with the same outcome: How to repair a Mac disk with Disk Utility - Apple Support

You are right about restoring the backup too. It is possible that if there were a software related problem, it could return with the restore of the backup. Are you having an issue with your Mac that led you to repair the drive using Disk Utility?

Keep us posted.

Take care!

If it could not be repaired from Internet Recovery Mode, then I would erase the whole physical drive if this is an Intel Mac. I don't know why Apple allows unfixed errors to be considered "Ok" since I have had several of our organization's Macs have definite issues caused by unfixed errors. After erasing the drive and cloning the contents back, the issues went away each time.

How you erase the drive depends on the OS you are installing. If you are reinstalling macOS 10.14+, then you will need to erase the physical drive as GUID partition and APFS (top option). If you are reinstalling macOS 10.13 or earlier, then you will need to erase the physical drive as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled). If you are installing macOS 10.13, then the macOS installer will convert the HFS+ volume to APFS.

Tim Ball,

Are you running the First Aid option while in macOS Recovery? If not, do you get the same messages when completing that process from the macOS Recovery? How to repair a Mac disk with Disk Utility - Apple Support

Also, are you able to back up your Mac using Time Machine without any issues or errors? Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

Those details should help to isolate this behavior further so we can provide the best guidance possible.

Take care.

When reinstalling macOS you need to erase & reinstall to the "Macintosh HD" volume which is where the macOS system files are located. The "Macintosh HD - Data" volume is where the home user folders are located which contain your data files.

If you have all your data, then you should be able to delete the "Macintosh HD" volume which is your old system volume. After deleting that volume, you can use Disk Utility to rename your other two volumes (rename the system volume first by deleting the " - Data" part from the name, then you may also need to do the same to the other volume which has " - Data" in the name twice -- delete the second " -Data" so the second volume is then "Macintosh HD - Data"). The order of doing this is important to avoid name conflicts. Sometimes renaming one of the volumes will have Disk Utility automatically adjust the base of the other volume name as well, but this is inconsistent between various versions of macOS.

Double -check that the "/Users/Shared" folder does not contain anything in the "Recovered Items" folder which may be taking up storage space.

See this Apple article for details regarding the multiple APFS volumes utilized by macOS 10.15+:

About the read-only system volume in macOS Catalina - Apple Support

FYI, there are other significant changes with macOS 11.x+ as well in case you have (or will have) a newer Mac (or macOS) at some point:

Signed system volume security in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS - Apple Support

Since First Aid was unable to repair the problem you will need to erase the whole physical drive (Intel only) or the hidden Container (Intel or M1), then reinstall macOS before migrating/restoring from a backup. I honestly don't know how macOS handles a TM backup, but I don't think it will pull in any file system errors from the backup as the files will be copied individually.

Tim Ball wrote:

Thanks.

I'm using OS 10.15.7 and it's a quad core Intel Core i7, but old, (late 2012)

So, " then you will need to erase the physical drive as GUID partition and APFS (top option)." ?

If you are installing macOS 10.15, then yes.

Keep in mind if you are booting into Internet Recovery Mode you may not always get the macOS 10.15 installer.

If you enter the path as you listed, then it will be the location on your boot volume (system & data).

About the read-only system volume in macOS Catalina - Apple Support

If a Relocated Items folder appears on your Mac after upgrading macOS - Apple Support