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I've recently upgraded to macOS Catalina and seeing 2 drives in disk utility

Hello everyone, I recently upgraded to macOS Catalina after its released and publicly available to everyone. and realised that I now have two drives as follow:


  • Macintosh HD

  • Macintosh HD - Data

I am not sure how this happened. How to rectify this make them look like a single drive.

Posted on Oct 12, 2019 8:49 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 12, 2019 9:08 PM


NagaSumanth wrote:

why is it displaying 2 disk drives, can't it show only one?

is there anyway to maintain it as a single drive?


No.


Everything is as it should be in the macOS Catalina.


When you upgrade to Catalina, your current macOS system volume is renamed, e.g. to "Macintosh HD - Data", its role is set to Data, and then a new volume is added to your startup disk's APFS container with the System

role and simultaneously grouped with the Data volume. The two volumes

within that group share special bonds and receive special treatment from

the Finder and from each volume's filesystem. From the user

perspective, these two volumes are treated as a single


ref:https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/working-apfs-volume-groups


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6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 12, 2019 9:08 PM in response to NagaSumanth


NagaSumanth wrote:

why is it displaying 2 disk drives, can't it show only one?

is there anyway to maintain it as a single drive?


No.


Everything is as it should be in the macOS Catalina.


When you upgrade to Catalina, your current macOS system volume is renamed, e.g. to "Macintosh HD - Data", its role is set to Data, and then a new volume is added to your startup disk's APFS container with the System

role and simultaneously grouped with the Data volume. The two volumes

within that group share special bonds and receive special treatment from

the Finder and from each volume's filesystem. From the user

perspective, these two volumes are treated as a single


ref:https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/working-apfs-volume-groups


Oct 12, 2019 9:08 PM in response to NagaSumanth

NagaSumanth wrote:

why is it displaying 2 disk drives, can't it show only one?

No

I've found this link saying this happened because its in beta : https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250482395.

That's not what the link says. Catalina shows two drives, beta or not

but I upgraded to Catalina once it is available. still having the issue mentioned in the link.

It's not an issue. It's normal

is there anyway to maintain it as a single drive?

No. For security reasons there are two volumes in Catalina. One contains protected system files, the other users files.

I've recently upgraded to macOS Catalina and seeing 2 drives in disk utility

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