Macintosh HD - Data drive appears after clean install of Sonoma?

[och]

I have upgraded to Sonoma a few weeks ago, and the upgrade broke a few things, including google drive, so I decided to do a clean install from USB. Before the reinstall I erased the drive through disk utility, and for whatever reason it showed Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD Data partition. I tried to erase the data partition, but after erasing it would immediately reappear, so I assumed this is how it is supposed to be.

I did the clean install of Sonoma, and now I have both Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data. Clicking on the data drive, show no files, seems to be empty.

How can I fix it? I am willing to do another clean reinstall, but I need to make sure I'll delete everything properly this time.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Yes, you have to have the -Data drive. It contains absolutely everything you have added to the machine, data, settings apps etc. The System Volume is on the Macintosh HD , and cannot be written to or modified. It is verified as being unchanged on every boot, then a snapshot of it made machine boots from snapshot. If it fails verification the machine will not boot. You can see the snapshot in your Disk Utility screenshot.

If you want to start over you can "erase all content and settings" which returns the machine to factory state with a pristine system volume, and launches Setup Assistant as it would for a new machine.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Yes, you have to have the -Data drive. It contains absolutely everything you have added to the machine, data, settings apps etc. The System Volume is on the Macintosh HD , and cannot be written to or modified. It is verified as being unchanged on every boot, then a snapshot of it made machine boots from snapshot. If it fails verification the machine will not boot. You can see the snapshot in your Disk Utility screenshot.

If you want to start over you can "erase all content and settings" which returns the machine to factory state with a pristine system volume, and launches Setup Assistant as it would for a new machine.

However you do seem to an extra -Data volume. There have been some threads on this. The second one is not in the same container as the System Volume and first -Data vol, which it should be.
what size does DU show for the second one, and the first one?
in your shoes would make I was well backed up and try deleting the second one, subject to the sizes.

 

[och]

Well, since I just did a clean reinstall, I just went ahead and did it again. This time I used the disk utility and made it display all devices, not just volumes, and erased the main device. Reinstalled Sonoma, everything seems good now. Thank you for the help.

 

[gilby101]

disk utility and made it display all devices

Never forget "display all devices". So bad that the default is not to show.