Reinstall macOS on volume?

[Eneco]

Hi,

I have split my system hard drive into multiple volumes. When I want to reinstall macOS, can I simply keep the other volumes and only format the one with the macOS install and use that for the new install? Since these are not partitions but flexible volumes, I'm not sure if that's possible.

Does anyone know more about this?

 

[gilby101]

Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer needs to now why you are want to reinstall (I haven't reinstalled for over 3 years), some idea of your existing volumes diskutil list and how you use them. You would need to do the erase and reinstall from recovery mode.

 

[Eneco]

I always do a fresh install of new macOS releases to not bring over dead bodies of previous versions. Has been working flawlessly for me so far, but I haven't worked with volumes before. This is what my drive looks like:

"Projects" and "Samples" are volumes of the system drive "Macintosh HD". So I guess I just have to format the second tier "Macintosh HD", which seems to be the volume where my system is installed?

 

[gilby101]

"Projects" and "Samples" are volumes of the system drive "Macintosh HD". So I guess I just have to format the second tier "Macintosh HD", which seems to be the volume where my system is installed?

Yes. But, just in case, make sure you have a good backup of all the volumes.