Two Drives on my new (Refurbished) Mac?

[macrumors99]

Hello all,

I recently purchased an old refurbished 2012 Mac Mini Server edition in order to restore an old 2012 iMac that crashed a couple years ago. I had a Time Machine backup waiting in the wings and restored it when I received the new mini. I restored it right out of the gate at the moment I turned the Mini on and it asked "would you like to restore?"

Restore went perfectly. It's running Mojave 10.14.6. But, I have a few questions. It appears there are two internal drives. (See attached.) I was not expecting that. The smaller drive was blank when I first looked, but now has what appear to be some small system files and folders. (See attached.) So:

1) Can you confirm there are indeed two separate internal solid state drives. I thought it might be an old windows partition I had, but the screenshot seems to say it is a separate internal drive. I noticed the two "File Systems" are different.

2) Should I be worried about this small drive if it is indeed a separate drive? If so, maybe use disk utility to just wipe it and use it as another storage disk? Kinda weird that some system files are showing up there now though...

3) Should I wipe the Mac completely and then restore my backup again?

Thanks all!

 

[MarkC426]

Do 2 volumes show up in Disk Utility?

Mac mini Server (Late 2012) - Technical Specifications – Apple Support (UK)

support.apple.com

It looks like it's a standard config to have two drives.

Doesn't seem like much space is left on the 1TB...66gb..?

 

[macrumors99]

Do 2 volumes show up in Disk Utility?

Mac mini Server (Late 2012) - Technical Specifications – Apple Support (UK)

support.apple.com

It looks like it's a standard config to have two drives.

Doesn't seem like much space is left on the 1TB...66gb..?

Ah, the tech specs you shared nailed it. It is indeed one 1TB and one 256GB. And yes, they both show as internal in disk utility.

The 1TB was jam packed, but I've since synched a bunch of stuff to OneDrive and iCloud, so it's about half full now.

Quick aside: The seller said two 1TB HDD drives. That's why I'm confused. This is two SDD drives, with one at 1TB and one at 256GB. I think I'll take the downgrade in storage for SDDs instead of HDDs, especially in light of my new cloud storage.

Thank you so much for the tech specs. Definitely nailed it!