Upgraded to Monterey but its showing a split drive

[Honovi]

Hi there,

I recently upgraded my MacBook air to Monterey from Catalina but I have two disks showing on my desktop.

I tried to make them one disk by following some online instructions I found which I typed into the terminal... I received the following message [see screenshot] what does it mean that one of the computer disk devices must be solid state? How do I make it one Hard drive from here?

I'm kind of regretting upgrading because I didn't realise all my data would be wiped [I made a back up to my external hard drive so I have all the data saved] but I noticed I now have less space on my HD before I had 30+GB and now its showing only 13.16GB remains on my upgraded system...?

If someone could please advise I would be so grateful. Is there a way for me to revert back to my older system with all the files intact? [As I said I made a back up its on my hard drive]

Thanks so much,
Honovi

 

[hwojtek]

You followed the wrong instructions.
What you've found is an instruction to split a Fusion Drive.
What you see on the Desktop is "Honovi" and "Macintosh HD", right?

BTW if you upgraded and your data was wiped, you didn't do an upgrade, but "wipe & install". There is no way for an upgrade to delete existing data.

 

[Honovi]

I followed the instructions described here from Apple support to fix a split Fusion not create one so im not sure why you're saying that - these instructions aren't incorrect from what I can tell: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207584

I need help to make it one drive.

Yes on the desktop it says Honovi and Macintosh HD.

You clearly didn't read my post correctly. As I already stated I did a back up prior to the upgrade and I have it all stored on my external hard drive.

I upgraded and the existing data was not transferred to my mac because it said there wasn't enough storage which is strange because there was 30GB of storage just before upgrading and now there's only 13.16 GB.

 

[hwojtek]

Why would you split a Fusion Drive when you didn't have one?

Why do you say I am wrong in stating you followed the wrong instructions - these are instructions to split a Fusion Drive that you didn't have and you still don't have it - and they you say you followed the instructions to split a Fusion Drive?

Whether you did a backup or not is not relevant. You wrote "upgraded & deleted". This is not what happens during an upgrade. You installed a fresh OS, you did not upgrade. In case of an upgrade, the files are already there, so there is no need for transferring them.

You have two partitions on your drive. That's why you think your data was "deleted". In your errors during installation, you installed a clean system on "Honovi" and all your data that should've been upgraded is still on "Macintosh HD". Probably it still contains your old system. Hold Option on starting the computer to see if you can choose your old OS.

You may try to start the old system, use Disk Utility to remove the "Honovi" partition and install new OS again, this time properly. Or you can manually move data from "Macintosh HD" to "Honovi" first, then try to remove "Macintosh HD" partition and then resize "Honovi", again in Disk Utility. I doubt it will work, AFAIR MacOS does not allow easy resizing of a boot partition.

You are welcome.

 

[Honovi]

Did you read the link? It says how to FIX a split fusion drive not create one...

I clicked on upgrade to new os which showed Monterey. I did an upgrade.

Yes on the Macintosh HD my old files appear to be there. I already had a split drive from my old os which was Sierra I think. So it just copied that over.

I'm not sure what you mean about installing OS again properly because I installed it as per instructions from software update.

How do I remove the Honovi partition? Just by deleting it?

I held option on start up and received this. See image. What do I do from here? Which drive do I select?

Thanks but for someone who is new to this your tone is patronizing and not very helpful.

I would prefer if someone else can assist if you're going to be weird about it.

Jeeze just came asking for help and this guy is going into over drive about how I did everything wrong.

 

[Honovi]

Selected the HD drive and its taken me back to the old system which was actually Catalina but there are still two drives on the desktop. Not entirely sure how to resolve this issue of deleting the one called update.

 

[JMStearnsX2]

Update is a hidden volume in Monterey, the filesystem changed from HFS to APFS when you did the upgrade. Monterey now uses a fully read-only volume for the OS, which is separate from the data volume. It's all in the background, when you are using Monterey, it all looks like one drive. If you are booted in Catalina, that is why you see both volumes.

 

[JMStearnsX2]

If you run:

diskutil list

in Terminal, it will show a better view of how your drive is partitioned and such.

 

[hwojtek]

Did you read the link? It says how to FIX a split fusion drive not create one...

What did you want to fix? A Fusion Drive you don't have? This is not the instruction for your problem. You identified the wrong problem and therefore this instruction is wrong, because it does not solve your problem.

I clicked on upgrade to new os which showed Monterey. I did an upgrade.

If you upgraded, you'd have replaced the old system with the new one.
You didn't and the screenshots you posted are a proof of it. Please, don't try to tell us you did something, when you post proofs you did something else.

Yes on the Macintosh HD my old files appear to be there. I already had a split drive from my old os which was Sierra I think. So it just copied that over.

It means you installed the new system to the wrong partition of the disk. Instead of "Macintosh HD" you installed to "Honovi", just like I wrote in my first post. That triggered all the problems next.

I'm not sure what you mean about installing OS again properly because I installed it as per instructions from software update.

To the right disk I mean, in order to do an upgrade. Software Update asked you where to install the new OS and you clicked on the wrong disk, therefore you didn't upgrade but clean installed a new OS.

How do I remove the Honovi partition? Just by deleting it?

You may do it, but first you need to boot to your old system (option key during power on and select "Macintosh HD"). If it starts (I don't know how High Sierra copes with APFS filesystem, this may be the biggest risk), you can use the old Disk Utility and remove the "Honovi" partition. Next, make sure you use "Startup Disk" control panel, to select your old system as the boot default.

Restart, your old system should boot automatically.

Go to Disk Utility again and try to resize the partition to 100% disk size. The problem I see is, that MacOS will not happily resize a booted partition. It may be, that resizing will only be available if you used the Recovery OS or a bootable USB installer.

I held option on start up and received this. See image. What do I do from here? Which drive do I select?

Either - one will lead you to the new system (Honovi), the other - to your old High Sierra. Catalina

 

[Honovi]

Hi JM thanks for your response it actually looks like I have multiple HD's 😱

I'm not a mac expert so I'm not sure how to resolve this... how do I know which disks to delete? I think I will just stay with Catalina for now until I get my mac to someone who knows how to do the installs. It took like 20 hours and didn't even work correctly 😪

 

[JMStearnsX2]

Wow, not sure how you got that many volumes out of an upgrade.

If you have backups of your data, you might consider just an erase and reinstall like hwojtek mentioned. It's not too difficult, boot to recovery (hold ⌘ & R when you power it on), erase the entire drive in the disk utility (pressing ⌘ + 2 will show everything), then run the installer. Most Macs will do a Monterey install in less than an hour. You can run a Time Machine restore after it's done.

 

[Honovi]

What did you want to fix? A Fusion Drive you don't have? This is not the instruction for your problem. You identified the wrong problem and therefore this instruction is wrong, because it does not solve your problem.


If you upgraded, you'd have replaced the old system with the new one.
You didn't and the screenshots you posted are a proof of it. Please, don't try to tell us you did something, when you post proofs you did something else.



It means you installed the new system to the wrong partition of the disk. Instead of "Macintosh HD" you installed to "Honovi", just like I wrote in my first post. That triggered all the problems next.


To the right disk I mean, in order to do an upgrade. Software Update asked you where to install the new OS and you clicked on the wrong disk, therefore you didn't upgrade but clean installed a new OS.


You may do it, but first you need to boot to your old system (option key during power on and select "Macintosh HD"). If it starts (I don't know how High Sierra copes with APFS filesystem, this may be the biggest risk), you can use the old Disk Utility and remove the "Honovi" partition. Next, make sure you use "Startup Disk" control panel, to select your old system as the boot default.

Restart, your old system should boot automatically.

Go to Disk Utility again and try to resize the partition to 100% disk size. The problem I see is, that MacOS will not happily resize a booted partition. It may be, that resizing will only be available if you used the Recovery OS or a bootable USB installer.

Either - one will lead you to the new system (Honovi), the other - to your old High Sierra. Catalina

Yes, I am used to work with and coach groups of highly creative talented individuals and being in my 50's I waste no time for babysitting.

Have fun, snowflake, you just wasted an hour of my time I tried to help you without taking any special needs into account, that will be $200.

And if you are lacking basic competency to upgrade an OS, please refrain from talking about me in 3rd person

Wow, not sure how you got that many volumes out of an upgrade.

If you have backups of your data, you might consider just an erase and reinstall like hwojtek mentioned. It's not too difficult, boot to recovery (hold ⌘ & R when you power it on), erase the entire drive in the disk utility (pressing ⌘ + 2 will show everything), then run the installer. Most Macs will do a Monterey install in less than an hour. You can run a Time Machine restore after it's done.

I'm not sure either must have something to do with the install...

To be honest this all sounds complicated. I've never done this before, first time and I don't want to mess things up because I need to work from my mac.

Can you possibly just let me know which volumes I need to remove? Do I click on erase to remove volumes?

 

[JMStearnsX2]

Which OS do you want to keep? Catalina or Monterey? Have you been able to determine what OS is on Macintosh HD, and what OS is on Honovi?
From the screenshot, I see you have one partition (container disk1) with multiple volumes (Macintosh HD, Macintosh HD - data, etc.).

Macintosh HD & Macintosh HD-Data should be the Monterey OS. It looks like Honovi is your Catalina.

I've enclosed a snapshot of what Monterey volumes look like when booted in Monterey. Notice even though the Disk Utility reports my macOS SSD as having two volumes, it looks like one volume in the OS.

 

[Honovi]

Thanks I want to keep Catalina its too complex for me to do this by myself as I've never done it before.

Macintosh HD is Catalina and Honovi is Monterey. Do I just click on erase to remove the volumes? What is this volume HD called update? 🤔

Also it says I have 2 Macintosh HD's.

One is called Macintosh HD the other Macintosh HD - Data - how do I know which to keep and which to delete? Thanks for your help 👍

 

[Honovi]

This is what it shows after I ran diskutil on my mac... this is so confusing 😪 I noticed when I go to disk utility it only gives me the option to delete update and Honovi - Data.

I can't delete the other 2 which are called Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data [the latter appears to be the one I want to keep]

 

[JMStearnsX2]

If Honovi is Monterey, that's the one you want to delete. Select it in Disk Utility and then click the minus volume button. Make double sure that you have backups of your data before deleting any volumes.

 

[Honovi]

Thanks for your help, yes I backed up all my data to my external hard drive so I have a copy.

Do I do the same for the HD called updated?

 

[JMStearnsX2]

 

[Honovi]

Sorry yes just saw it. Its asking delete volume group or delete - which do I select?

 

[JMStearnsX2]

Delete the volume group.

 

[Honovi]

And I do the same for the HD called update?

 

[JMStearnsX2]

The rest of the volumes should be part of Catalina, you shouldn't need to do anything else. I don't think that Disk Utility will let you delete volumes of the current running OS (Catalina in this case).

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

You should realize that the "new" Mac OS's will show TWO VOLUMES:
- Macintosh HD (where the system/OS is kept)
and
- Macintosh HD Data (where the user-installed data and apps are kept).

This IS NORMAL -- it's not "a problem" that requires correction.

Something else I seem to recall about the latest OS's (Monterey, etc.):
You might need A LOT OF FREE SPACE to install them.
40-50gb, perhaps more.
Otherwise, the install may fail.

When you upgraded from HS to Monterey, and saw the Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD Data volumes, and then "tried to fix them"... THAT's when the trouble started.

Because -- they're not supposed to be "fixed".
They are... what they are.
It's... the "new way".

If you have a backup, what I'd do is:
Boot to internet Recovery (command-OPTION-R)
Erase the internal drive
Install the new OS
Restore from your backup...

 

[NewUsername]

If you have a MacBook Air and you had Sierra installed on it, you’re 100% sure to have one single SSD in your MacBook Air which is you internal drive.

I would suggest to do what Fishrrman suggests: boot to Internet Recovery, erase the entire internal drive, then install the latest version of macOS compatible with your Mac. Afterwards, you’ll have a brand-new and “correct” setup, after which you can add back your data from your backup. So your problem is solved.

 

[WilliApple]

What you did was split the hard drive into a separate volume and install Monterey on the other one. You still have High Sierra on your computer in addition to your data. When you remove that volume, you don’t need to make a new volume to upgrade. Just open the Monterey installer and follow the instructions there.