Help! Multiple HDs With the Same Name?!

[Mr. Monsieur]

I'm trying to run a Time Machine backup, but my iMac won't do it because it says that there are two internal volumes with the same name?! I backed it up before with the same names, so I'm not sure why it's giving me a hard time now. That said...I'm not sure why there are two internal HDs in the first place?

Trying to figure out:

1) What I'm supposed to do to fix the problem (without causing an even bigger problem - will renaming the HDs make it difficult for the OS to locate info? Will doing so break/confuse the OS somehow?

2) Why are there two HDs in Disk Utility?

Pics below...

 

[Mr. Monsieur]

Maybe this is more complicated than I originally thought (or, perhaps, it's so obvious that it's not worth answering)?! Perhaps I should revise my questions to:

1) If I change the names of the hard drives, will it confuse the OS?

2) Can anyone tell me what my two internal Hard Drive partitions are doing?

3) Which one is the boot drive?

 

[chscag]

Leave the names alone. You're obviously running Catalina and that's the way Catalina presents your drive to Disk Utility and Finder.

Macintosh HD = That's the system and is read only.

Macintosh Data = That's your home folder and apps. You can read and write here.

Time Machine should show no distinction when backing up your drive. I'm likewise running Catalina and Time Machine works just as it always has.

Don't be mislead thinking you have two drives. You only have one which is shown that way in Catalina.

 

[Mr. Monsieur]

You are correct...I am running Catalina (I need to update my signature!)...BUUUUUT...

Time Machine continues to refuse to backup...I keep getting the error message (image posted) above. At this point, I'm tempted to wipe/reformat the Time Machine HD and begin the backups from scratch...so annoying...definitely not what I expect from Apple(!) Perhaps even if I do this, TM will still give me a hard time? :-/

Any further thoughts/suggestions?

 

[SecuritySteve]

Under your view dropdown, can you check Show All Devices ...

And then show what the panel looks like? For example, mine shows this:

This shows you that there's only one internal drive on my system, and that it has two partitions, one of which is an APFS container with a boot segment and a data segment. Hopefully this will clear things up for what might be wrong with your setup.

 

[Mr. Monsieur]

Leave the names alone. You're obviously running Catalina and that's the way Catalina presents your drive to Disk Utility and Finder.

But if I don't change the name, Time Machine won't work(!) Perhaps I could change the name of "Data" partition? If not...what am I supposed to do?!?!?!?!

 

[chscag]

I don't understand why Time Machine won't work? It works fine here with the drives named as they are. Time Machine should not be seeing two drives.

Maybe you need to erase your Time Machine drive and start over?

 

[Mr. Monsieur]

Maybe you need to erase your Time Machine drive and start over?

Just did this...didn't work. Freaking Apple.

 

[chscag]

Then there's something else going on with your system. Ah... okay. I just noticed what's causing the problem. I missed that before, sorry.

Rename your drives:

iMac HD to: Macintosh HD

iMac Data to: Macintosh HD Data

Now try to run Time Machine. Should work.

 

[Mr. Monsieur]

Rename your drives:

iMac HD to: Macintosh HD

iMac Data to: Macintosh HD Data

Now try to run Time Machine. Should work.

Thanks so much...done...alas, still not working :-(

 

[chscag]

Here's what mine looks like:

As I stated above, Time Machine recognizes them as one drive. I'm not sure what's going on with your drive and Time Machine.

 

[Mr. Monsieur]

Thanks SO MUCH...I went ahead and renamed just the Data partition (when I tried renaming the main partition it automatically changed the name of the Data partition too)...which didn't solve the problem...buuuut...after some more searching online, some folk had success with...rebooting (dhop)...and yeah, that solved whatever the issue was. Argh.

 

[chscag]

LOL, the old reboot trick. Works every time. Glad you got it resolved.