I have a MacBook Pro I use just for experimenting and recently installed Catalina on it. After I did that there were two drives on the Desktop, Macbook Pro HD and Macbook Pro HD - Data. A little research here tells me that the second drive is part of the Catalina install. When I tried to do a Time Machine backup it told me it couldn't because I had two identically named HD's. Even though the name wasn't the same I renamed Macbook Pro HD - Data by adding a 2 on the end. Time Machine then went ahead and made a backup as expected. However, when I open Disk Utility it now shows 3 drives, the second one ending in - Data and the third one ending in - Data 2. I can't see - Data on the desktop and Get Info shows - Data 2 is about half the size of the original Macbook Pro HD. Can someone explain to me what I have going on and is there a way to hide the extra HD from the Desktop? Thanks.
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Is there a way to hide the extra Data drive from the desktop?
- Thread starter Daverich4
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Oh gosh, sounds like something got majorly confused when you upgraded. The data drive should only show up in Disk Utility - everywhere else the two should appear as a single drive; they’re supposed to be look and feel just like the old single partition way Apple used to do it.
Someone else may have a proper fix for you, but my best guess would be to back up your entire system to a hard drive, and reinstall Catalina from scratch.
Someone else may have a proper fix for you, but my best guess would be to back up your entire system to a hard drive, and reinstall Catalina from scratch.
Most likely you’ll run into the same issue, yes.
what I would do - and there are probably easier ways to do this - would be to manually copy all of your data to another, external hard drive, and then reinstall Catalina from scratch, and formatting your internal drive at the same time to clean up all of the partitions. You’ll need to make note of what you have installed, applications wise, so you’ll be able to reinstall them.
A couple questions for you though; this second ghost Data drive. Is there anything on it? Can you remove it as a volume from in Disk Utility? you might just be able to delete it and then reabsorb it into the proper Data volume, but first you’d have to make sure it is properly empty so you don’t lose any data!
Good luck!
I‘m not sure which one is the “ghost”. Is it -Data or -Data 2? I can remove it from the desktop but as soon as I restart it comes back.
That seems odd because it is my understanding that it's supposed to be hidden. You'd think Apple would know how to install their own OS.
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I took a quick look with Disk Utility and I can't unmount MacBook Pro HD or MacBook Pro HD - Data but I can unmount MacBook Pro HD - Data 2. The last one is on the desktop so I can also remove it by dragging it to the trash but it returns as soon as I restart. Maybe I'll try a reinstall of Catalina and see what happens. I keep the computer just for experimentation so if it gets screwed up it doesn't really matter.
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what happens when you open Data or Data 2? I would imagine one is empty, or at least one will have your user folder and all of your files in it, and the other shouldn’t.
If *both* have a copy of all of your files, that would be strange and then I’d proceed with great caution.
The -data drive IS hidden, when you boot back into Catalina. Not visible in normal use, except for Disk Utility (and, well, other apps that would show all partitions. If you boot back to a Mojave system, then the -data partition remains in view, unless you choose to not show internal drives on the desktop. That's a setting in Finder Preferences/General tab. Uncheck "Hard Drives", and internal drives then don't appear on the Desktop.
I'm not sure what you mean by "boot back into Catalina", that's the OS the computer is running. And, the data drive is NOT hidden, that was the whole point of my question.
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I'm not real sure what I have. Maybe I should just reformat the disk and start over. The main HD is about 35 gigs. The Data 2 HD is about 17 gigs. They both have applications but there are some apps on each drive that are missing on the other one. There is a User folder on each drive, again with different things in each of them. Glad I'm doing this on a setup I don't care about instead of my main computer.
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Again, if you are booted to Catalina (since macOS 10.15.2), the - data partition of the system should be hidden from normal view, and only seen in Disk Utility, System Information, or through the terminal.
If you have modified the partition names, like adding a 2, etc, then I don't know what you might have.
You said you have multiple " - data" partitions now. So, you have extra partitions, but only one of those is active. Other - data partitions would be useless to your system, essentially not used at all, because the system would ignore incorrect parts of the partition set. I suppose you could save test files, and see which -data partition is affected by that. Don't know how you can manually do that, but there must be a way in the terminal, I'm guessing.
How do you get out of this mess? backup your system drive. Erase the boot drive completely. Reinstall, restore from your backup. Don't change the drive names after the system is installed. If you are running 10.15.2 or newer, the "- data" partition of the boot drive doesn't appear in "public" view. (That's in my experience, anyway)
If you have modified the partition names, like adding a 2, etc, then I don't know what you might have.
You said you have multiple " - data" partitions now. So, you have extra partitions, but only one of those is active. Other - data partitions would be useless to your system, essentially not used at all, because the system would ignore incorrect parts of the partition set. I suppose you could save test files, and see which -data partition is affected by that. Don't know how you can manually do that, but there must be a way in the terminal, I'm guessing.
How do you get out of this mess? backup your system drive. Erase the boot drive completely. Reinstall, restore from your backup. Don't change the drive names after the system is installed. If you are running 10.15.2 or newer, the "- data" partition of the boot drive doesn't appear in "public" view. (That's in my experience, anyway)
Thanks for the reply. Right from the start, before I did anything, the Data Drive was visible on the desktop. That is, there were two drive icons on the desktop, not one. As I said in my initial post, the reason I renamed the Data Drive was because Time Machine said it was the same name as the Main HD and wouldn't let me make a backup. Once I renamed it Data Drive 2, Time Machine was able to backup the computer. Not much I could do about having to rename the Data Drive, it was either that or no backups. In any event, I reformatted the drive and am installing Catalina from scratch. In about 15 minutes I'll know if it makes any difference. Thanks again.
After I reformatted the drive and redid Catalina and restored from a Time Machine backup I ended up with close to what I had before with the exception of a Relocated Items Folder with some System odds and ends in it. Disk Tools let me remove the Data-2 Drive so now I only have one drive on the desktop. Doing that didn't seem to affect anything so I thought I was set. However, I just discovered that the computer has been encrypting a Time Machine backup all night so that's one more thing to work on. Encrypting the HD seemed to take so there's that. Again, this is a computer that could burst into flames and it wouldn't really matter but so far, not all that impressed with Catalina.
to start afresh with Catalina (and get to a position where your system reflects original installs) its not enough to just re-download and re-install Catalina.
in Recovery Mode, using System Utility, you would need to DELETE your data (HD-Data) drive(s) and ERASE your system (HD) drive.
(that implies you will have already made multiple backups you can use to reinstall yr data- either Time Machine backups that actually work, or other media).
you might want to take a screen shot of what is showing in Disk Utility/View/ with Show all devices clicked and post that here. it will be useful for others to help.
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In the first sentence of the post you’re responding to I indicated that I’ve already done what you’re suggesting. Reformat/erase the drive? Thanks.