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Trouble Understanding Specs

A

aurellie1998

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 13, 2020
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Hello guys!

I'm quite new to the macbook community and I have quite the trouble reading the specs from system report.

This is a second-hand mbp 15" mid 2015 release from a relative. The previous owner told me the hd was partitioned, but I didn't really get what is a partition and what does it do, as well as how to store things in certain partitions.

I'm also confused as to whether my laptop uses a hard disk drive which has the rotating platters or is it an ssd?

Sorry if this sounds tech-ignorant, I only started paying attention to laptop specs now because I'm about to enter graphic designing school 😅 Any help is greatly appreciated!
IMG_20200713_160902.jpg
 
You have an SSD. It clearly says so under "Medium Type".

"Partitioning" means that your single physical drive has been split into two logical ones. These are treated by the operating system as two separate drives and should (normally - see below) appear in the Finder as such. In your case, you should have one drive called "Macintosh HD" and one "Macintosh HD - Data".
 
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Technically speaking, your disk has "partitions" but from a user standpoint that is pretty irrelevant. What you are seeing is the standard way that Apple's new operating system uses the SSD. It places all the system files on a special partition that the user can't (or shouldn't) change. This was done primarily for security reasons (so malware can't modify your important system files).

The "Data" partition is what you see as the "disk" when you use the Mac. But this is just techie stuff that you don't need to worry about. You will never see that "Macintosh HD - Data" name unless you look at the System Report or use Disk Utility.

Bottom line.... don't worry about it, from your point of view there is only one "disk" that you can use. Enjoy the new computer!
 
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Janichsan said:
These are treated by the operating system as two separate drives and should appear in the Finder as such.
Click to expand...

Actually, they will not appear like this in the Finder under MacOS Catalina. In the Finder, you will only see one disk named "Macintosh HD". This confused me too when I finally switched to Catalina recently. :)
 
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Boyd01 said:
Actually, they will not appear like this in the Finder under MacOS Catalina. In the Finder, you will only see one disk named "Macintosh HD". This confused me too when I finally switched to Catalina recently. :)
Click to expand...
Ah, okay. I'm not using Catalina, so... 🤷‍♂️

Normally, partitions would appear as separate drives, though.
 
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Boyd01 said:
Actually, they will not appear like this in the Finder under MacOS Catalina. In the Finder, you will only see one disk named "Macintosh HD". This confused me too when I finally switched to Catalina recently. :)
Click to expand...

Why is the Data partition taking so much storage though? Is there any way to make it less? Will it affect the performance of the mac? Kinda disappointed that I only have 300gb out of the available 500gb now 😔
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Boyd01 said:
Actually, they will not appear like this in the Finder under MacOS Catalina. In the Finder, you will only see one disk named "Macintosh HD". This confused me too when I finally switched to Catalina recently. :)
Click to expand...

Do you experience a faster battery drain after switching to Catalina? I've used another mbp previously, 2015 release 13" running on mojave, and I don't recall the battery decreasing as fast as on Catalina
 
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All that spec is telling you is that you have 300gb of free space on your computer. It's not a matter of the "data partition taking so much storage space". Seriously, stop looking at the System Report and forget about partitions, like I said, this is just techie stuff.

The point is, there's about 200gb of "stuff" on your Mac. IIRC, if you setup a Mac "from scratch" it will only have about 35gb of stuff on the disk. So apparently there are a lot of other things that the previous owner left behind. These could be programs, pictures, video.... just about anything. If you can't figure out what's there or whether you need it, maybe ask the original owner, since they are a family member. I'd think they could help you identify stuff that can be deleted.

You can also get a general sense of what's on your Mac by choosing "About this Mac" from the Apple Menu and clicking the "Storage" button at the top of that window. This might help

Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

Learn what to do if your Mac startup disk is almost full, or you don't have enough storage space to download, install, or copy.
support.apple.com support.apple.com
 
The space taken up could be from logs, extensions, stuff from previous systems, who knows? Previously installed stuff could also be affecting the battery life. If you haven't performed a clean install (install from scratch instead of update) of the system and apps, I would recommend doing that now. It will restore the normal partitions and get rid of cruft from previous installations, so you can start over again as the new owner.
 
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I agree that wiping the SSD and doing a clean install is generally a good idea with a used computer. However, in this case the OP received the laptop from another family member and they might have left some software or other files on it specifically for the benefit of the OP. So, in this case, I would start by discussing this with the original owner to get a sense of what they left on the machine.

Also in this case, the laptop already has the "normal partitions", this is what a Mac is supposed to look like with Catalina.
 
Unless an application's licensing terms allow it (family or not), "leaving some software or other files on it specifically for the benefit of the new owner" is not the right thing to do. They may also be tied to an AppleID or license key that the current owner doesn't have or want to use.
 
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