Does the big sur public beta create its own container/partition?

[patearrings]

Does the big sur public beta create its own partition/container on your main/internal Mac drive if you decide to install it there? Or do you need to create a partition for it in disk utility first?

if it does, is it easy to delete afterwards to reclaim your main drive back for Catalina?

 

[patearrings]

no one has installed this to their default mac drive? surely someone has?

 

[Jack Neill]

I installed it to a separate container. It asks you before you install it. I had made a container for it before I downloaded it. I thought it was neat but of no use to me, so I deleted the container.

 

[joevt]

Create an APFS partition using Disk Utility (make it a new partition - do not make a new volume inside an existing APFS partition). Then install Big Sur there.

 

[Jack Neill]

Create an APFS partition using Disk Utility (make it a new partition - do not make a new volume inside an existing APFS partition). Then install Big Sur there.

I did that and haven’t had any issues. What’s the issue with a container?

 

[joevt]

I did that and haven’t had any issues. What’s the issue with a container?

I think we're talking about the same thing ("Container" vs "APFS partition"). Disk Utility calls it a "Container" or "APFS Container" in the main UI. The partition UI calls it a "Partition" with "Format: APFS". Select a disk, then click "Partition" to use the Partition UI.

The APFS "Add Volume" UI appears when you select a container and click "Partition", then click "Add Volume". I don't use this feature - all my APFS containers only include the system volume (and the default volumes that go with it that Disk Utility doesn't show: Data (Catalina and later), Preboot, Recovery, and VM).