Multiple HD - same amount of info - post parallels

[Plantnation]

Hello all,

I'm running out of space on my Mac. I think this second hard drive showed up when I installed parallels. The program I wanted to run on windows couldn't because I didn't have enough memory. I have since deleted parallels. Someone smarter than me was looking at my computer and noticed that I had two hard drives. Suspect that I allowed the partition to have access to the files so I could run my program and it created the second drive.

Not sure what "wheel" is vs "admin"

Can anyone confirm that I'm running two HDs with the same information. If so how do I safely delete the duplicates?
Thank you.

Mac Amateur

 

[DeltaMac]

Your second hard drive, which you (or someone else) must have renamed, likely in June of 2022, has almost nothing stored (729 KB).
Parallels would not have renamed that drive, as it is an essential part of the drive volume group.
Your real second drive (which is likely still named "Macintosh HD - Data", by the way) shares space with the "Macintosh HD", as part of the APFS volume group. You would be able to see all 3 volumes in your Disk Utility. If you want to, you can browse into that Macintosh HD - Data Renamed. As it is not used, I doubt there is anything on that volume, maybe a handful of folders, but not enough that would show any duplicates of anything, and you could safely delete that volume (the one named Macintosh HD - Data Renamed). Just remember that it holds almost nothing, and just shares space with the volume group in the same APFS container.
As a final note, now you can see that 256 GB is just not a lot of space...

 

[Plantnation]

oh I see!

Thank you. I feel like 250GB was a decent amount in 2018 when I bought it. haha

I'm always a little leery about malware. If you don't mind clarifying a few things.
I see where none of the storage is being used by the "data-renamed" drive.

Why would it say that the "owners:" is disabled? The other two are enabled. When I tried ejecting the "renamed" drive. Just because I wanted to see what would happen. It popped up with the message in the last image.

If there is nothing in that drive, how would a program be using it? apprehensive to delete it in the disk utility.

Thank you again for taking the time to school me in this.

Does it make sense

 

[DeltaMac]

"Preboot" is not the same volume that you were trying to eject.
It IS a legitimate part of your AFPS volume group, and is not normally mounted, or visible.
So, when you open that "... renamed" volume, you don't see any files or folders?
Very often, that "program" that might be using a volume, might be the Finder.
press Option-Command-Esc, which will bring up the "Force-Quit" window. You can click on "Finder", then press "Relaunch". You will then get another window, asking if you want to do that, so click "Relaunch" again. Your desktop will briefly blank, then come back. (The Finder quits, then restarts.)
And, you should then be able to quietly Eject that Macintosh HD - Data Renamed volume.
Or, if you see the Force Eject... button, you can press THAT...
(BTW, if you try to eject the Macintosh HD - Data Renamed volume, AND it shows that same message, calling the volume "Preboot", then you really don't want to eject THAT disk

"Owners" could be disabled on a volume that you do not have permissions from the system to modify in any way.