is my disk utility normal ?

[10-Dee-Q]

hi, so i just bought a M1 MBP
i've been mac user for a long time
but normally on my disk utility it will show MacintoshHD
now there's several items there that i'm not familiar with, is it normal ?
and also i've search the web, normally it shows Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD Data
but why mine only shows "data" withou any "macintosh" name before it ?

just making sure , in case i screws up something and need to do a reformat, thank you so much.

 

[solouki]

Hi 10-Dee-Q,

I see your old machine is a MBP 15", so is probably a 2019 or perhaps earlier machine. This machine would not have come with macOS 11 Big Sur on it. Your MBP M1, however, did come with Big Sur on it. Apple has not only changed their filesystem, APFS, but they have also changed where the macOS is stored (now on its own secure partition) as well as the Users's login directories (now in Macintosh HD Data). I don't know if your MBP 15" has the latest Big Sur OS or not, but probably not.

If you execute the following Terminal command (in a Terminal.app window):

diskutil list

you will see the plethora of disk volumes that the macOS 11 Big Sur now specifies.

I'm pretty sure that what you are describing as seeing in the Disk Utility app is perfectly normal for an M1 MBP running Big Sur. But since you didn't upload a screenshot of your Disk Utility window, I can't be absolutely positive. I believe everything is fine, so why don't you run the Disk Utility's First Aid on Data just to make sure that it verifies that your Data volume is clean?

Regards,
Solouki

 

[scsyc]

Catalina changed the partitioning scheme. You now have a volume for the System and a volume for the Data (your user). Big sur introduced a new subtlety. It is not directly booting from the system volume but from a copy of it. You might see a system volume which is greyed out disk utility with another volume attached to it which is mounted instead. This is perfectly normal and you should not worry about it.

 

[10-Dee-Q]

Hi 10-Dee-Q,

I see your old machine is a MBP 15", so is probably a 2019 or perhaps earlier machine. This machine would not have come with macOS 11 Big Sur on it. Your MBP M1, however, did come with Big Sur on it. Apple has not only changed their filesystem, APFS, but they have also changed where the macOS is stored (now on its own secure partition) as well as the Users's login directories (now in Macintosh HD Data). I don't know if your MBP 15" has the latest Big Sur OS or not, but probably not.

If you execute the following Terminal command (in a Terminal.app window):

diskutil list

you will see the plethora of disk volumes that the macOS 11 Big Sur now specifies.

I'm pretty sure that what you are describing as seeing in the Disk Utility app is perfectly normal for an M1 MBP running Big Sur. But since you didn't upload a screenshot of your Disk Utility window, I can't be absolutely positive. I believe everything is fine, so why don't you run the Disk Utility's First Aid on Data just to make sure that it verifies that your Data volume is clean?

Regards,
Solouki

i forgot to put the screen shot, here it is

 

[10-Dee-Q]

Catalina changed the partitioning scheme. You now have a volume for the System and a volume for the Data (your user). Big sur introduced a new subtlety. It is not directly booting from the system volume but from a copy of it. You might see a system volume which is greyed out disk utility with another volume attached to it which is mounted instead. This is perfectly normal and you should not worry about it.

i see, but i saw several people disk utility and it shows macintosh HD and macintosh HD Data where mine it shows macintosh HD and data, no "macintosh HD" in the data.
is that normal ?

 

[svenmany]

Perhaps you accidentally renamed it. In Disk Utility you can easily type any name you want for that volume.

 

[solouki]

10-Dee-Q,

Looking at your Disk Utility pane, it is perfectly normal. You have not accidentally renamed your partition, it came with that name.

As I mentioned in my first reply, I would go ahead and run First Aid on the Data volume (highlight the Data volume by clicking on it, then run First Aid). It almost certainly will verify that your disk has no errors, but if First Aid does end with an Exit Code that is not 0, then you will have to do something about this.

When upgrading older Macs with older OSes to Catalina, the new OS established a "Macintosh HD Data" volume, but I believe the new M1 MBPs with Big Sur already loaded have a "Data" volume instead, or at least mine does.

Do the First Aid check to put your mind at rest -- I'm pretty sure you'll find that you don't have any problems.

Have you made backups of your disk? It is my recommendation that a person, even on a new computer that ostensibly is working perfectly, still make routine backups.

Regards,
Solouki

 

[svenmany]

Good to know about the difference with the new Macs and the naming convention. On my 2018 computer that has a fresh Big Sur install, my data volume was named with the system volume name followed by " - Data". I guess that's why the OP typically sees that on the web.

I don't believe there's any consequence to having these volumes named anything you want.

 

[solouki]

I don't believe there's any consequence to having these volumes named anything you want.

Agreed. And since the Users's volume is different on your upgraded 2018 machine to Big Sur vs a 2020 M1 MBP, and my 2019 MBP upgraded to Big Sur also uses "Macintosh HD - Data" for the Users's volume, then it most certainly doesn't matter what the volume name is.

 

[svenmany]

Agreed. And since the Users's volume is different on your upgraded 2018 machine to Big Sur vs a 2020 M1 MBP, and my 2019 MBP upgraded to Big Sur also uses "Macintosh HD - Data" for the Users's volume, then it most certainly doesn't matter what the volume name is.

There is a distinction between "it doesn't matter what it is" and "it doesn't matter if you change it".

I was playing around with the name and changed my data partition to have the name "data". Carbon Copy Cloner asked me to confirm that the new name identified the same volume as was identified with the previous name in a scheduled clone. So, I guess it's best to leave it with the original name in the case that some software took note of it.

 

[solouki]

There is a distinction between "it doesn't matter what it is" and "it doesn't matter if you change it".

I was playing around with the name and changed my data partition to have the name "data". Carbon Copy Cloner asked me to confirm that the new name identified the same volume as was identified with the previous name in a scheduled clone. So, I guess it's best to leave it with the original name in the case that some software took note of it.

Agreed. The name doesn't matter, but if you change the name then everything prior that used the original name will have to be updated to use the new name. (I'm slightly surprised that CCC asked for confirmation, since I didn't think that CCC identified disks by their volume names -- but maybe CCC was just making certain for some reason.)

Solouki

 

[joevt]

Type diskutil list apfs
I don't think the volume name matters. Check the "APFS Volume Disk (Role)" field.
For Big Sur and Catalina:
One should be (System) and mounted at /
Another should be (Data) and mounted at /System/Volumes/Data

Each volume has a UUID (a 16 byte identifier). So an app like CCC can use that to identify renamed volumes.

You can get info for the System and Data volumes:
diskutil info /
diskutil info /System/Volumes/Data

They should have a matching APFS Volume Group thata matches the UUID of the Data volume. This way, it may be possible to have multiple System/Data pairs in the same APFS container.

If you mount the Preboot volume, it should contain a folder with a name that matches the UUID of the System volume (for Catalina) or the Data volume (for Big Sur). Actually Preboot is automatically mounted for Big Sur at /System/Volumes/Preboot, otherwise you can mount it by volume name or device name using diskutil mount ______
I suppose a Preboot volume can have multiple folders, one for each System/Data pair. The Recovery volume is similar.

 

[Apple_Robert]

i forgot to put the screen shot, here it is

All of that is normal for the M1.

 

[10-Dee-Q]

10-Dee-Q,

Looking at your Disk Utility pane, it is perfectly normal. You have not accidentally renamed your partition, it came with that name.

As I mentioned in my first reply, I would go ahead and run First Aid on the Data volume (highlight the Data volume by clicking on it, then run First Aid). It almost certainly will verify that your disk has no errors, but if First Aid does end with an Exit Code that is not 0, then you will have to do something about this.

When upgrading older Macs with older OSes to Catalina, the new OS established a "Macintosh HD Data" volume, but I believe the new M1 MBPs with Big Sur already loaded have a "Data" volume instead, or at least mine does.

Do the First Aid check to put your mind at rest -- I'm pretty sure you'll find that you don't have any problems.

Have you made backups of your disk? It is my recommendation that a person, even on a new computer that ostensibly is working perfectly, still make routine backups.

Regards,
Solouki

i just did the first aid and this is the screen shot, so that means my drive are ok ?

 

[solouki]

i just did the first aid and this is the screen shot, so that means my drive are ok ?

Yes, your drive is fine...for future reference, see the second line from the bottom of your screenshot, it says the filesystem check exit code is 0, this means that there are no problems (that Disk Utility can find) on your "Data" drive. Your computer is fine. Enjoy it.

Solouki

 

[10-Dee-Q]

Yes, your drive is fine...for future reference, see the second line from the bottom of your screenshot, it says the filesystem check exit code is 0, this means that there are no problems (that Disk Utility can find) on your "Data" drive. Your computer is fine. Enjoy it.

Solouki

thank you for the info.
??