Is my Mac hard drive set up properly?

[bigsmile01]

I recently did a clean reinstall of macOS Monetary and Windows Bootcamp. But I'm not sure if my Hard drive is set up correctly, as there are some oddities I have noticed:

Oddity 1: Disk Utility Oddity​

When I look at my hard drive in Disk Utility, there is a mystery partition called Container disk 1:

The container disk can only be erased, but not removed. I've Google around and lots of forums say that's normal. However, having 110GB taken up like that seems like a waste of space. Is it normal? Also, what is a snapshot drive?

Oddity 2: Boot menu Oddity​

If I restart MacOS and hold down alt, the boot menu shows the following:

It's showing two windows drives, but I only have one.
Also, the spinning icon spins continually.

In fact, when I select the Mac drive, the icon continues to spin:

Oddity 3: Boot Camp Oddity​

When I am in bootcamp and select "Restart in MacOs" it says "Could not locate OSX Boot Volume"

I am not sure if that means anything significant.

Terminal Output​

Here is how my drives look via terminal using the command: diskutil list internal

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk2⁩         819.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data ⁨OSXRESERVED⁩             10.0 GB    disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data ⁨BOOTCAMP⁩                60.9 GB    disk0s4
   5:                 Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk1⁩         110.5 GB   disk0s5

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +110.5 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s5

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +819.0 GB   disk2
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD - Data⁩     51.4 GB    disk2s1
   2:                APFS Volume ⁨Preboot⁩                 512.3 MB   disk2s2
   3:                APFS Volume ⁨Recovery⁩                4.2 GB     disk2s3
   4:                APFS Volume ⁨VM⁩                      1.1 GB     disk2s4
   5:                APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD⁩            15.2 GB    disk2s8
   6:              APFS Snapshot ⁨com.apple.os.update-...⁩ 15.2 GB    disk2s8s1

Is this all normal? If not, how do I go about fixing it?

 

[Mike Boreham]

Container disk 1 looks wrong. Can you create a usable APFS volume on it? I would have expected Container Disk 2 to appear in DU.

EDIT Do you have View > Show all devices checked? I assumed yes because you are showing a Container which I didn't think appears if you have Show only Volumes checked.

Here is what mine looks like with the two view options:

What you can and can't do with DU is always a bit hit and miss IME, and sometimes a second attempt works. I wouldn't be happy to have 110GB lost like that, even if I had to erase install restore.

Is that OSXRESERVED container something you created for specific reason?

You might get more expert answers to the Bootcamp specific answers in the Windows on Mac forum. I haven't used Bootcamp for a few years but certainly remember oddity 3, but don't recall the resolution, or even if it is normal. I do recall that having NTFS for Mac installed on the Mac side affects selecting Bootcamp as start up from Mac, but not sure if it can affect the other way round.

 

[bigsmile01]

EDIT Do you have View > Show all devices checked? I assumed yes because you are showing a Container which I didn't think appears if you have Show only Volumes checked.

Here it is with Show all Devices checked:

Is that OSXRESERVED container something you created for specific reason?

No I didn't create it. I think it appeared when I did a clean install of Mac OS Monterey but I might be misremembering.

What you can and can't do with DU is always a bit hit and miss IME, and sometimes a second attempt works. I wouldn't be happy to have 110GB lost like that, even if I had to erase install restore.

What's a good way of doing this? I made a Mac OS Monterey USB installer but when I use it, it doesn't look like there's a way to erase the mystery container disc.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Mike Boreham]

At least Container Disk 1 now appears in the sidebar and contains the all the boot volumes and the snapshot...as expected, and explains why you canned delete it. Now I am puzzling about Container Disk 2, which does not apparently contain any volumes, but is 819GB according to the diskutil list output.

What I am seeing is a Mac with 1TB internal drive which has the following volumes.

Macintosh HD using 66.6 GB (15.2 System vol + 51.4 Data vol)
Macintosh HD System Vol snapshot 15.2GB
Bootcamp partition 60.9GB
OSXRESERVED container (no volumes) 10GB

The above add up to 152.7GB of used space.... leaving 847.3GB unused which seems to relate to Container Disk 2, which has no volumes inside it.

What does Finder show your free space as being? Close to 800GB?

I don't understand all this, but I would advise not doing anything drastic like erase>install>migrate at this point. Unless someone else understands what you are seeing it might be better to take it to an Apple Store. There may not be much wrong with it. Is anything not working correctly?

From this thread and the link therein, it seems that OSXRESERVED should not be there and can be deleted.

I would really like to understand your Container Disk 2...it might be that that is what should be deleted, but go very carefully! (I assume you have all this stuff backed up? including a Bootcamp image).

 

[rpmurray]

Containers are just the names that APFS gives what used to be called partitions. Container 1 is the partition where you installed Monterey, which creates the "Macintosh HD" and "Macintosh HD - Data" volumes. Apple now separates the OS in its own sealed volume that is immutable "Macintosh HD" (or whatever name you give it), and your data and everything else (like applications) go in the Data volume. The OS makes them look like one drive.

So if I had to guess, I'd say at some point you wanted to make more than one partition on the drive. There's one for OSXRESERVED, one for BOOTCAMP (both of them appear to be formatted for Windows) and then the one that is Container 2. I haven't played too much with APFS so I'm not sure how you'd merge the containers back together.

It might be easier to just backup everything, erase the whole drive (what you see at the top when you Show All Devices). In the example bigsmile gave, his is APPLE SSD SM1024G Media. And then unless you need bootcamp, just have the one container for the whole drive and restore to it. This means you'd need to have another drive to boot from while you make those changes.

 

[bigsmile01]

There may not be much wrong with it. Is anything not working correctly?

Before doing a clean install of Monterey I backed up my data and I haven’t transferred it back yet so I’ve not used the machine that much but it seems okay.

. And then unless you need bootcamp, just have the one container for the whole drive and restore to it. This means you'd need to have another drive to boot from while you make those changes.

is there a guide that explains how to do a full erase and reinstall properly? When I did a reinstall last time it asked for options like master boot record and Apple partition map. I wonder if I selected the wrong thing and ended up with the current situation. Also if I do want to use boot camp what’s the best structure to use? Thanks!

 

[Mike Boreham]

Really curious about the answer to my question "What does Finder show your free space as being? Close to 800GB?"

Since you are backed up and prepared to start over you may as well try some things before erasing. Delete OSXRESERVED for a start, and depending what Finder is showing you, maybe Container disk 2. Then take stock.

Always format Mac drives with GUID partition scheme and APFS file system. The only exceptions are if you are creating a bootable installer it has to be HFS+, and there is a case for spinning drives to be HFS+.

 

[bigsmile01]

eally curious about the answer to my question "What does Finder show your free space as being? Close to 800GB?"

Whoops, missed that! Yeah, finder shows 748GB space free (because I've installed some apps).

Delete OSXRESERVED for a start, and depending what Finder is showing you, maybe Container disk 2. Then take stock.

I managed to delete OSXReversed with no ill effects and the finder free space jumped from 748GB to 759 GB. In addition, that extra Windows drive that appears on the boot menu (i.e. when holding down alt during start up) has gone. There doesn't seem to be a way to remove the extra container disk . So I might have to do a full wipe.

Interestingly, Container Disk 1 & 2 seems to have switched around:

 

[Mike Boreham]

Whoops, missed that! Yeah, finder shows 748GB space free (because I've installed some apps).

I managed to delete OSXReversed with no ill effects and the finder free space jumped from 748GB to 759 GB. In addition, that extra Windows drive that appears on the boot menu (i.e. when holding down alt during start up) has gone. There doesn't seem to be a way to remove the extra container disk . So I might have to do a full wipe.

Interestingly, Container Disk 1 & 2 seems to have switched around:
View attachment 2025397

View attachment 2025398

You seem to be trying to do everything from the Partition diagram, which I don't often use....what happens if you open DU and select Container Disk 1 in the sidebar....do you have option to erase by right click or from the top right options. Hopefully the 110 GB would become usable. You could try adding a volume to it and seeing if that changes anything. It might make it deletable.

I would definitely try running Disk First Aid on all levels (Drive, Container, Volume)

If you can't get rid of Container Disk 1 and recover the space, there does appear to be something odd, which might be very simple to fix, or might need to erase and reinstall.

There is a limit to how far help can go on a remote forum. I would not advise anything as drastic as a full erase in a forum thread, based on the level of understanding I have of your problem. It might be very simple for someone with the right knowledge and the machine in front of them.

 

[bigsmile01]

You seem to be trying to do everything from the Partition diagram, which I don't often use....what happens if you open DU and select Container Disk 1 in the sidebar....do you have option to erase by right click or from the top right options. Hopefully the 110 GB would become usable. You could try adding a volume to it and seeing if that changes anything. It might make it deletable.

I would definitely try running Disk First Aid on all levels (Drive, Container, Volume)

If you can't get rid of Container Disk 1 and recover the space, there does appear to be something odd, which might be very simple to fix, or might need to erase and reinstall.

There is a limit to how far help can go on a remote forum. I would not advise anything as drastic as a full erase in a forum thread, based on the level of understanding I have of your problem. It might be very simple for someone with the right knowledge and the machine in front of them.

Thanks for all your help! I tried First Aid from the recovery partition and it said it couldn't wrong as there was a problem with the partition. Googling around, the advice seems to be to an erase and reinstalled. So I did that and installed bootcamp. This I noticed OSXREVERSED appeared as did the extra container. However, when bootcamp finished they both disappeared. So I'm guessing the previous bootcamp install probably didn’t go correctly.

Here is my current set up:

I'm pretty sure that's all correct.

Thanks again for your help!

 

[Mike Boreham]

Looks good. Glad it worked out!