Downgrade from Sequoia to Sonoma leaves Sequoia partition on disk

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Level 1

4 points

Downgrade from Sequoia to Sonoma leaves Sequoia partition on disk

Greetings. I needed to downgrade from Sequoia to Sonoma but after the downgrade there's still a disk partition that contains the Sequoia OS. I want to remove it so I can utilize that disk space but I've not been able to figure how. I've searched this forum and online with no results. The downgrade process was done using a bootable volume.

How can I (safely) remove the Sequoia partition? Thanks!

Please see attached screen shots.

Disk utility screenshot showing the unused Sequoia partition:

Disk utility screenshot showing the unused Sonoma partition:

And on the desktop two root drives appear:

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 14.7

Posted on Jun 2, 2025 11:05 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

D.I. Johnson

Level 7

30,971 points

Jun 2, 2025 02:20 PM in response to DebraPeri

You're welcome.

Though Disk Utility and macOS won't let you alter or delete the current startup volume, your trepidation is understandable. 🤣

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Answer 2

Jun 2, 2025 12:22 PM in response to DebraPeri

One at a time in Disk Utility, select each of the Maia volumes that hold the Sequoia OS and user data, the upper "Maia" & "Maia - Data" volumes, then click the Volume delete ( – ) button in the tool bar.

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Answer 3

DebraPeri Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 2, 2025 01:16 PM in response to D.I. Johnson

Thank you! That worked and was really simple. I was afraid of doing something like deleting a root volume but it appears to have worked perfectly. Thank you so much!

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