How to Delete Partition? Confused

[PTVMan]

I finally upgraded from Catalina to Big Sur today and I would like to delete the Big Sur beta partition. When I go into Disk Utility I see a list of volumes and totally confused on which to delete. There is a container that has the beta with volumes named Big Sur and Big Sur data (see image). What exactly do I delete to get rid of the beta and partition altogether? Thanks in advance.

 

[KALLT]

If you installed the beta on the Big Sur volume, then “Big Sur” and its accompanying “Big Sur - Data” (both belong a APFS volume group) are the ones you want to remove. Hence, “Macintosh HD” is the system partition whereas “Macintosh HD - Data” is where your personal data (among other things) is.

 

[gilby101]

You are booted from Macintosh HD - I can tell that because it has an open snapshot (the com.apple... thing). So: Make sure you have a good backup (just in case) and then erase the volumes Big Sur and Big Sur - Data.

Strictly speaking the hierarchy is Partition (you have just one), APFS Container (again you have just one) and then your 4 Volumes.

 

[dsemf]

You are booted from Macintosh HD - I can tell that because it has an open snapshot (the com.apple... thing). So: Make sure you have a good backup (just in case) and then erase the volumes Big Sur and Big Sur - Data.

Strictly speaking the hierarchy is Partition (you have just one), APFS Container (again you have just one) and then your 4 Volumes.

My understanding is that the container is a partition:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         500.1 GB   disk0s2

DS

 

[gilby101]

My understanding is that the container is a partition:

A partition formatted as an APFS container. Splitting hairs, I agree!!!

But sometimes(?) it can help to aware of the partition table which only contains details of the partition locations (on the physical disk) and their types.

The sudo gpt -r show disk0 displays the partition table, but on a running system does not work for the boot disk. Here is the output for an external disk (disk6) with a bootable system (disk8) and another APFS formatted partition (disk7):

sudo gpt -r show disk6
start size index contents
0 1 PMBR
1 1 Pri GPT header
2 32 Pri GPT table
34 6
40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
409640 156250000 2 GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
156659640 820113488 3 GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
976773128 7
976773135 32 Sec GPT table
976773167 1 Sec GPT header

Those UUIDs are "well known" types - in this case EFI and APFS.

diskutil list disk6
/dev/disk6 (external, physical):
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk6
1: EFI ⁨EFI⁩ 209.7 MB disk6s1
2: Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk8⁩ 80.0 GB disk6s2
3: Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk7⁩ 419.9 GB disk6s3