Reinstalling Sierra. Do I erase disk or volume.

[raymanh]

I'm in the process of reinstalling macOS Sierra. I am erasing the hard disk before reinstalling it. When on the disk utility, I can either erase the drive (labelled 'Apple SSD...') or the volume indented beneath this (labelled 'Macintosh HD'). Now the Apple website advises to delete the former first, and if not possible then the latter. However, most videos and other websites that I've read have advised to erase the volume Macintosh HD not the actual Apple SSD drive.

Which one should I do. And if I erase the Apple SSD drive, do I need to manually create a new partition?

Thanks

 

[Audit13]

If there is only one partition, you can erase the apple ssd.

 

[spooklog]

The names in the indented part are the partitions of the drive. When it comes to erasure, ideally you want to erase the partition in which you will install the operating system. If there is just one name in the indented part, there's just one partition: It doesn't matter whether you erase that or choose the Apple SSD. If there are more names in the indented part, you need to choose the partition where the OS will go, and erase just that.

Sorry if this sounds complicated--it's really simple, but only if you know about disks, partitions and so forth. When in doubt, follow the directions provided by Apple and you should be OK.

 

[raymanh]

Thanks. In the end I erased the drive 'Apple SSD'. There was only one partition underneath, plus the official apple site said to erase the actual disk so I did it that way.