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petercw2

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 1, 2003
142
15
I have a 2012 i7 iMac which several years ago I updated from the old Fusion combo to a straight SSD.
This morning woke up to it in recovery mode screen - and when I attempt to recover from the TM back up, I'm told there isn't enough space. The SSD is a 1TB drive and the back up isn't that big. What is weird is when I look at Disk Utility there are two drives listed, "1TB SSD" and "1TB SSD - Data" - both claim to be 120.99GB in size, although as you can see from the screen grabs, differ in how they calculate that number. Are both of these suppose to be here? If not, how to I drop the one I don't need. I suppose I could just do a bootable Catalina installer but I'd rather avoid that. thanks for any suggestions.
Screen Shot 2022-02-27 at 2.42.36 PM.png

Screen Shot 2022-02-27 at 2.42.30 PM.png
 
The drive that you show in your screenshot appears to be a 128GB drive NAMED 1TB SSD.
The added "Data" volume is normal since Catalina.
Your screenshot does NOT show a 1TB drive, but does show a drive with that name.
From your Disk Utility window, click the View icon, and choose Show all Devices. (you can do this from the View menu, too)
You will see the top item will be your SSD device (showing the manufacturer's model info)
Select that top device.
Post a screenshot of THAT screen.
You can also open your Terminal, and run the command
Code:
diskutil list
, post the results of that command.
 
Last edited:
1st, thanks for the guidance. interesting. Now I'm confused. I've upgraded a few iMacs over the years, and I would have sworn this was one that had a Fusion drive I upgraded to just a single 1TB SSD after the HDD portion of the Fusion conked out about 5 years ago. Here's the screenshot you requested along with the serial number lookup... thanks again for any guidance and assistance. Maybe I didn't upgrade this and the HDD has just now gone bad? (I find it hard to believe a HDD lasted 10+ years).

Screen Shot 2022-02-27 at 7.33.26 PM.png
Screen Shot 2022-02-27 at 9.39.38 PM.png
 
Yeah, that iMac had a fusion drive, 1TB HDD plus a 128GB SSD. So, the HDD was removed, and the SSD was left in place, and named 1TB SSD for some reason.
Your SSD shows ALL the volumes. If the HDD was still in there, and if it recently stopped working, then I don't believe that the SSD portion of a fusion drive would show all the normal volumes in a macOS APFS boot drive.

What shows up in the SATA tab of your System Information app?
Is there any difference in the Disk Utility when you show all devices?

If you had a 1TB SSD installed, it could be dead, but I think it should appear as a device when you change the View menu to Show All Devices (not just Show Only Volumes)
Why would your 128GB SSD appear now, with the name "1TB SSD", unless you had been using it the whole time (with only 128GB -- actually less than 120GB

A completely dead SSD might not show up at all, I suppose. The only way to find out much more would be to open your iMac.
 
What shows up in the SATA tab of your System Information app?
Is there any difference in the Disk Utility when you show all devices?
it shows the same 1TB SSD pair (one w/ "data") as seen above.

so weird. I'm assuming now I never upgraded this computer (my memory has been known to fail me) it's the original Fusion drive and the HDD portion just died? But isn't it odd it (the HDD) doesn't show up here at all? I know there was 1TB of some sort of storage in here because the Time Machine back up is 750+gig.

guess a new iMac needs to be ordered.
 
*UPDATE* - ok, now I'm really confused because I just found my OWC receipt from 2019. I DID upgrade this from a Fusion to a single 1TB SDD - now I may have left the 128 blade in there too - but I don't get why the 1TB SSD I installed isn't showing at all. Never seen a SSD go bad like this before.

It was working fine, and as I originally wrote, woke up to it sitting on the recovery screen. very weird.
 
In my mind - the OTHER mystery is how the 128 GB (not a blade, by the way, it's a standard 2.5-inch SATA SSD, just small capacity) was formatted to show all the volumes that are set up with a normal system install. I think maybe your other drive (HDD or SSD, whatever) is still in there (but probably dead)
Again, because the real 1TB drive is not visible at all, then the only way to discover this is to look inside...
 
In my mind - the OTHER mystery is how the 128 GB (not a blade, by the way, it's a standard 2.5-inch SATA SSD, just small capacity) was formatted to show all the volumes that are set up with a normal system install. I think maybe your other drive (HDD or SSD, whatever) is still in there (but probably dead)
Again, because the real 1TB drive is not visible at all, then the only way to discover this is to look inside...
Yep - opened her up and there was my OWC 1TB SSD I'd installed just a few days short of 3yrs ago. I suppose because it arrived as a Fusion, I pulled the old HDD when it died, but left the 128 SSD and that's what is showing. The OWC must-have just flat out died. Ironically it is still under warranty. I have to ship it to them before they'll ship I replacement, I don't have time, so I've already installed a Samsung 870 I got at Best Buy and am installing Catalina as I type this. I'll get the OWC replacement and put it to use somewhere else. But, not seen a SSD go kaput before, especially one less than 3 years old. Thanks to everyone for the help here.
 
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