Studio Ultra with 4TB storage formatted into two volumes problems. My 4TB ssd internal Apple drive is formatted into two volumes, Boot at 500GB and New Photos at 3.5. I keep getting messages that my boot drive is almost full and to delete files

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Studio Ultra with 4TB storage formatted into two volumes problems. My 4TB ssd internal Apple drive is formatted into two volumes, Boot at 500GB and New Photos at 3.5. I keep getting messages that my boot drive is almost full and to delete files

I thought the volumes made from the container are flexible, expanding or contracting according to the files contained in each. My photos are in lightroom and photoshop on New Photos volume and 1.5 TB remains on that drive. My boot drive is formatted into 500 GB volume. I keep getting messages that I have to delete some of my files as the boot drive is almost full. I thought that these volumes were able to expand and contract as needed. That is not what seems to be happening.

I wish I had never created two volumes, on for boot and one for data. Can I back up my New photos volume and then delete that volume and have my boot volume expand to use all of the 4TB? I had used two volumes so I could manually backup my New Photos volume via carbon copy cloner and restore if the internal drive failed.

I feel like burning down the whole container and starting fresh, installing the boot from time machine. I dont want to do this, but I frankly dont understand Apples new setup of volumes, partitions and containers in APFS. Any help would be much appreciated.

Artguy

Mac Studio, macOS 12.6

Posted on Dec 6, 2022 7:59 PM

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Answer 1

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Barney-15E

Level 10

122,072 points

Dec 7, 2022 4:47 PM in response to Artguyfix

You don't set either one for anything. Just create each without any quota.

While I believe New Photos should be backed up by Time Machine, I would copy it to another drive to be sure.

Here is how to erase the drive:

Use Disk Utility to erase a Mac with Apple silicon - Apple Support

You can't use the Erase all content and settings option as you need to remove the volumes and replace them.

After erasing the drive you reinstall macOS, then Migrate from the backup when you go through the Setup Assistant. You may need to use the Bootable Installer option to erase the two volumes. You can also do that from Internet Recovery, but sometimes people have problems with that.

How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

68,528 points

Dec 8, 2022 10:18 AM in response to Artguyfix

Adding another APFS volume kind of acts a bit like a separate partition, but also acts a bit like a folder on a drive. The other APFS volume will get mounted like any other partition or volume, but when you access that APFS volume it acts more like a folder in terms of storage space. You don't worry about storage space for each folder...same for an extra APFS volume which resides in the same Container as they share the storage pool of that Container. If you look at Disk Utility of the system APFS volume and the AFPS "Data" volume, they will both show the same value for available storage because they are sharing the same Container. Each individual APFS volume will track how much space is used within each APFS volume which will be different between each APFS volume, but the amount of "available" space will be the same between them.

I've never tried using the "Quota" feature, so I'm not entirely sure how it affects things as I don't have any personal experience with "quotas" on macOS.

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Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,072 points

Dec 7, 2022 3:22 PM in response to Artguyfix

To share all of the storage, you should not have set a quota on either.

You can only set the quota on creation. You can’t change it after that.

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Answer 4

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,072 points

Dec 7, 2022 12:25 PM in response to Artguyfix

Your start up volume, “Boot,“ seems to have been allocated a quota of 500 GB, but it doesn’t appear full. If you set a quota, that’s all it is allowed to use.

Did you create the volumes before or after you installed macOS?

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Answer 5

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,072 points

Dec 7, 2022 2:16 AM in response to Artguyfix

Open Disk Utility, set it to Show all devices in the View pop up menu.

Take a screenshot of the disk list and post it here.

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Answer 6

Artguyfix Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 7, 2022 11:01 AM in response to Barney-15E

As requested, see the screen capture below. I have a container with one partition of 4TB which is divided into a boot volume of approx .5TB and the rest is a volume NewPhotos of 3.5TB. I wish to increase the boot volume so it will stop telling me to delete files as it is almost full. How do I proceed? If I back up the NewPhotos volume to external drive and then delete that volume, will the boot volume expand to full 4TB? Then can I make once again a NewPhotos volume at say 3.2GB, leaving the boot with more storage space? This seems complicated and cumbersome. I thought these volumes would expand and contract based on their content size. How do I proceed?

Thanks

Arty

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Answer 7

Artguyfix Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 7, 2022 12:36 PM in response to Barney-15E

Good question, not sure about the sequence of my volumes creation. I do think you are right, I did set a quota, not having experience with this new concept of volume creation. If I want two volumes, one boot, and one NewPhotos that expand or contract automatically by file use in each, how would I do that? Can I get there from where I am now and change quota on boot? Or do I need to backup everything and start from scratch? If I do that what is the procedure that would give me flexibility? Don't set quota? I appreciate your help and will do what it takes to get this set up the way I want.

thanks

arty

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Answer 8

Artguyfix Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 7, 2022 4:22 PM in response to Barney-15E

So if I back up and start fresh, I can set boot for 500GB and Newphotos for 3.5 without quotas. And if the boot needs more space, it will expand and take space from Newphotos, right? If that is correct, then do I just do a boot from recovery after backups and reformat the internal SSD the way I described above? Would I then do a restore from Time Machine Boot?I am looking for a thumbs up before I try that, kind of scary to reformat and restore.

thanks a lot

arty

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Answer 9

Artguyfix Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 9, 2022 12:04 PM in response to HWTech

HW Tech, thanks for your response. It is not clear in my mind so I don't really understand Quota either. If you look at the screen capture below the info windows on each volume say Capacity of Boot drive is 493GB so I guess the quota would be 500GB and reports the available space is 126GB with 424GB used. The info window says capacity of New Photos Volume is 4TB with 1.44TB available and 2.18 TB used.

however, the overview storage window has very different values for both drives, with 56GB available on Boot (instead of 126GB as in info window, and for New Photos reports only 56GB available, instead of 1.44TB as reported in info window.

That doesn't make any sense to me. Can you help me understand this?

thanks in advance

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Studio Ultra with 4TB storage formatted into two volumes problems. My 4TB ssd internal Apple drive is formatted into two volumes, Boot at 500GB and New Photos at 3.5. I keep getting messages that my boot drive is almost full and to delete files

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