In order to free some space on my Mac I deleted the hard drive in recovery mode and then re-installed Big Sur. However now it says that I have more than 100GB in other volumes. I can see that I have two HD-Data and read somewhere that it's ok to delete one. But which one can I delete without deleting something that the computer needs in order to function properly? I have taken pictures of the disk utility both in recovery and normal mode.
Earlier Mac models
Well, kaz-k makes an excellent recommendation. That not withstanding, the OS will not let you delete an active one. When this has happened, I tried to delete both. One was refused the other went away with no ill effect.
BUT, I was fully prepared to recover if I buggered up the Mac so there is that.
Do you have a backup of all your data? If not, then make sure you have a copy of that data on external media.
From the first two screenshots you can tell distinguish between the current "Data" volume and the old one. The current one is mounted under "/System/Volumes" while the older one is mounted like any external drive under "/Volumes". So from the first two screenshots while booted into macOS you would delete the second one showing a mount point of "/Volumes/Macintosh HD - Data".
Unfortunately distinguishing them while booted into Recovery Mode is much harder. I'm not sure of any easy or reliable way to do so from Recovery Mode. As others have mentioned you are much safer deleting the extra "Data" volume while booted normally into macOS so it will only allow you to delete the unused one. Just make sure you have your data before deleting the old volume because there will be no other way of recovering the data if something goes wrong.
Thank you for all the replies. I ended up deleting all of them to really swipe the computer clean. And then downloaded the MAC OS again. Never had so much space on the computer before worked really well.
Hi,
I think both of them are important, you shouldn't delete them.
Which HD-Data is ok to delete
