Other volumes in Container

Stibble wrote:

Thanks Leroy, helpful answer and food for thought.

I am not running 10.15 (that was the aborted install) still running 10.14. In the Macintosh HD volume i can see all my user data (which is duplicated in the Macintosh HD - Data volume). Is it feasible that the system volume is an appropriate size for Mojave (including as it does the user data, pre-catalina) and the ‘data’ volume is a redundant volume left from the aborted Catalina install ?

You can see which Volume is mounted if that is the case an delete the duplicate

see if this applies to your situation, going back to your old macOS...

Two Macintosh HD - Data

from Disk Utility.app you can see the mount point

One will be mounted at /System/Volumes/Data this is the one you want to keep,

The other will be mounted at /Volumes and you can simply use the “ -“ to delete it.

Stibble wrote:

on Mojave.

When I look at the storage on my iMac almost half is taken with 'other volumes'. When I perform a disk util search (below) I can see that an extra Macintosh HD - Data file is the culprit. I suspect that this was created when I tried to do a

system upgrade to 10.15

which failed and I needed to restore from back up. The extra volume mounts at start up but can be ejected without any apparent performance problems. I have had a look in Finder and it appears to be an identical copy of my HD

Can I safely delete it and is that best done through disk utility ?

Thanks in advance

Last login: Sat Jul 15 13:08:22 on console

diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *121.3 GB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_APFS Container disk2 121.1 GB disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_APFS Container disk2 1000.0 GB disk1s2

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: APFS Container Scheme - +1.1 TB disk2

Physical Stores disk0s2, disk1s2

1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data 512.8 GB disk2s1

2: APFS Volume Preboot 281.2 MB disk2s2

3: APFS Volume Recovery 1.1 GB disk2s3

4: APFS Volume VM 2.2 GB disk2s4

5: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 503.3 GB disk2s5

6: APFS Volume Update 795.0 MB disk2s6

"Macintosh HD - Data " this is your user account ie all your personal data.

ref: About the read-only system volume first introduced w/ macOS Catalina - Apple ...

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

It looks like you have tried re-install or some such in an incomplete way..a little borked.

" Macintosh HD " is your system Volume and should only be the macOS some approximation around 9-12GB,

not 503 GB

here is an example from macOS Catalina 10.15 of a clean installation

MacBook-Pro ~ % diskutil list internal

/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 11.1 GB disk1s1

2: APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data 264.5 GB disk1s2

3: APFS Volume Preboot 80.8 MB disk1s3

4: APFS Volume Recovery 528.1 MB disk1s4

5: APFS Volume VM 2.1 GB disk1s5

From Internet Recovery>DiskUtility>View>Show All Devices...here you erase/reformat/initialize the parent drive as new.

Mac startup key combinations

reinstall the macOS

restore your user data from backup