Anyone seen this behavior from Disk Utility, in which it reports three 4TB volumes on a 4TB drive?

[theorist9]

I have a 2019 i9 iMac running Monterey 12.6. I recently got a new 4 TB Kingston XS2000 external SSD to use for backups, and when I tried to partition it in Disk Utility, I got this (I forget if I this happened when I was creating separate volumes or separate partitions, since I was playing with both to see which worked better).

It's a 4 TB drive, so you're not supposed to see three different sections, each labeled as holding 4 TB.

I was not able to erase the volumes in Disk Utility, but when I ejected and then reconnected the drive the issue went away.

This actually happend twice, and I'm wondering if it means there's something wonky about the drive (I have until Oct. 1 to return it), or if this is instead a type of glitch that sometimes happens with Disk Utility. I did call AppleCare, and the advisor consulted with a senior advisor, who said he had never seen this behavior. But maybe some of you have.

I also don't know why there is a "Container disk 3" listed under my internal drive, since that container is part of the external drive. Now that the problem has gone away, this is what I again see for my internal (as 2 TB WD SN850):

 

[theorist9]

It turns out I can self-answer this: I see the same behavior on a 2nd external SSD that's a different brand, model and size: 2 TB SanDisk Extreme V2. So it's not the Kingston, it's something that's wonky about my system.

Maybe time for another OS reinstall....

 

[NoBoMac]

Nothing wrong. With APFS filesystems, they all share the same space and are dynamic in size and can grow to the full size if the need arises and there is sufficient unallocated space In the other volumes/partitions.

 

[theorist9]

Nothing wrong. With APFS filesystems, they all share the same space and are dynamic in size and can grow to the full size if the need arises and there is sufficient unallocated space In the other volumes/partitions.

AppleCare has seen my screenshots and disagrees with you. According to them, multiple volumes sharing a single container should (at least right after they're created) display like this:

...and not like this: