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What Is Volume Macintosh Hd

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3d drawing open source. If you have applied the macOS Catalina upgrade, you may have noticed a new volume on your Mac, 'Macintosh HD - Data'. This new volume is part of a volume group, which is a new concept in macOS Catalina. We discuss volume groups in detail here, but the remainder of this article aims to answer your questions about how CCC handles this new volume structure and what you have to do, if anything, to adjust your backups for macOS Catalina.

What Is Volume Macintosh Hd

In such situations, you can easily rely on an effective tool to recover data from Mac Volume erased by disk utility on Mac. SFWare Partition Recovery for Mac software ensures recovery of Macintosh HD partition from all possible scenarios of loss. In addition, it can restore data from formatted, damaged, or lost Mac HD partition. The Macintosh HD volume is where the system and system support files are kept and the user has no access to them. It's part of the new security that Catalina brings to the table. What version of Catalina are you running? Re: Volume 'Macintosh HD' is full Mon Sep 22, 2014 8:41 am Hey OP, just as a future reference, SHIFT+⌘+3 will take a screenshot of your monitor, then just head on over to imgur.com and upload that sucker You'll never have to use the ol' point and shoot again.

Maybe. If you are making a simple backup of your startup disk to a dedicated backup disk, then no, you do not have to make any changes to the destination unless CCC specifically recommends it. CCC will automatically make the changes required for your destination to be a bootable backup of macOS Catalina. If your destination volume is encrypted, however, see the question later in this document for information specific to encrypted destinations.

If you have multiple tasks that back up to the same destination, however, then now is a good time to revisit your backup 'hygiene'. Ideally, each source that you back up will have a dedicated volume on the destination. https://software-kits.mystrikingly.com/blog/fallout-new-vegas-body-mods. This is particularly important when one of the sources is a Catalina startup disk. See this section of CCC's documentation for guidance on how to configure your destination device to accommodate backups of multiple source volumes:

I want to back up multiple Macs or source volumes to the same hard drive
Video: Preparing your backup disk on macOS Catalina

No. When you select your startup disk (e.g. Macintosh HD) as the source for your backup task, CCC will automatically back up both volumes in that volume group.

Many external hard drives are shipped with a Windows-centric format and partitioning scheme. That partitioning scheme can't accommodate Apple's APFS filesystem, so before you can use your backup disk for making a bootable backup of your Catalina startup disk, you must make sure that it is partitioned with the correct partitioning scheme. This section of CCC's documentation walks you through the steps for configuring your backup disk:

Disk Utility's interface for performing this simple task is surprisingly unintuitive, so here is a summary of the process with some emphasis on the steps where people often go awry:

  1. Open Disk Utility
  2. Choose Show all devices from Disk Utility's View menu. This is a very important step!
  3. Choose the parent device of your destination volume in the sidebar – don't click on the backup volume itself, click on its parent device. If you don't click on the parent device, you won't be able to change the partition scheme.
  4. Click on the Erase button in the toolbar. Don't click on the Partition button! That would seem like the obvious choice, but you cannot actually change the partitioning scheme in the Partition interface.
  5. Set the Scheme to GUID Partition Map and the Format to APFS, then click the Erase button.

If you're still having trouble correcting the partition scheme, you may find this video demonstration helpful.

Because macOS Catalina leverages volume groups for the startup volume, creating a bootable backup requires an APFS formatted destination volume. HFS+ is no longer an option for booting macOS starting with macOS Catalina. For your convenience, CCC will automatically convert your HFS+ formatted backup volume to APFS as necessary and create a volume group on the destination. This conversion is the same conversion that took place on your startup disk when you upgraded to High Sierra or Mojave, with one notable exception: CCC tells you that it's going to convert the destination, and gives you the opportunity to decline the conversion. The conversion is non-destructive — any data that you have on the destination volume will remain in place, the only thing that changes is the format of the volume.

Typically there is no reason to decline the conversion. The conversion is non-destructive, and it's required for making a backup of the system. If your backup volume is dedicated to your CCC backup task, then converting the destination to APFS is the right choice.

However, if your destination volume is not dedicated to your CCC backup task or if you're not intending to back up the macOS System files, you should consider how the other uses of your destination might be affected by the conversion. For example, Time Machine is not currently compatible with APFS as a destination, so converting a destination volume that contains a Time Machine backup would break the Time Machine backup. CCC specifically avoids converting Time Machine backup volumes. Another example – if you're only backing up a single folder or handful of folders from your startup disk, you should configure a folder-to-folder backup instead, which won't require any conversion of the destination.

You should also avoid the conversion if your destination device is a slower 2.5' rotational HDD, i.e. with a rotational speed of 5400RPM (or slower!). APFS does not perform well on HDD devices, and that performance is unacceptable on these slowest HDD devices due to their much slower seek performance. Keep these slower disks formatted as Mac OS Extended, Journaled. These devices are suitable for button in the toolbar

If your destination volume is not APFS formatted, and you cannot or prefer to not convert the volume to APFS, you can create a dedicated partition on your destination disk for CCC to use. To create the partition:

  1. Open Disk Utility
  2. Select your destination disk in Disk Utility's sidebar
  3. Click the Partition button in the toolbar
  4. Click the '+' button to add a partition to the disk
  5. Set the name and size of the partition to your preference
  6. Choose APFS as the format
  7. Click the Apply button

If you were keeping other data at the root level of your backup disk that isn't on your startup disk, then that data is still on your backup disk, but it will be harder to find in the Finder due to the volume group changes that are applied for a backup of the Catalina startup disk. If your backup disk is named 'CCC Backup', right-click on the 'CCC Backup - Data' volume in CCC's sidebar and select Reveal in Finder to reveal that content.

It depends on how much data you have on your destination volume, the performance of the destination device, and the degree to which the destination volume is fragmented. It can take a while, but CCC won't wait for more than two hours for the conversion to complete. If it's taking longer than two hours, then CCC will recommend that you erase the destination volume instead, which will resolve any performance issues that are directly caused by filesystem fragmentation. If CCC issues this recommendation and you prefer to wait out the conversion rather than erase the volume, you're welcome to convert the volume in Disk Utility instead (the option is in the Edit Menu).

Unfortunately that is not possible due to a macOS limitation, Disk Utility cannot add an encrypted volume to an APFS volume group. When you select a Catalina+ startup disk as a source and an encrypted volume as a destination, CCC will disallow the selection and suggest that you erase or decrypt the destination volume. Free wildlife games. What channel is 911 on directv.

Fastest and easiest solution: Erase the destination as APFS (not encrypted)

Erasing the destination volume is the simplest and fastest way to resume your Catalina backups, and you can find detailed instructions for doing that here: Preparing a hard drive for use with Carbon Copy Cloner.

After you have run your backup task to a non-encrypted volume, you can then boot from the backup and re-enable FileVault in the Security & Privacy Preference Pane.

Related Documentation

Decrypting the destination volume will take considerably more time (possibly days) and effort, but you can decrypt the destination volume with one of the following methods:

A: Boot from the backup volume, open the Security Preference Pane, disable FileVault

B: Decrypt the volume in the Terminal application. E.g. for an HFS+ formatted destination:
diskutil cs decryptVolume '/Volumes/CCC Backup'

Or for an APFS-formatted destination, get a list of user IDs associated with the encrypted volume, then use one of the 'Local Open Directory User' UUIDs from the output of the first command with the second command:
diskutil ap listUsers '/Volumes/CCC Backup'
diskutil ap decryptVolume '/Volumes/CCC Backup' -user B44348A3-68DF-4B7B-800D-47FE38711178

Replace 'B44348A3-68DF-4B7B-800D-47FE38711178' with a UUID produced by the first command.

Wait for decryption to complete

You'll have to wait for the decryption process to complete before you proceed with your backup task. Decryption will continue in the background while you're booted from your production startup disk. macOS doesn't offer a convenient method to see conversion progress, but you can type diskutil apfs list (or diskutil cs list if the applicable volume is HFS+ formatted) in the Terminal application to see conversion progress.

Re-enabling FileVault on your Catalina backup volume

After you have run your backup task to a non-encrypted volume, you can then boot from the backup and re-enable FileVault in the Security & Privacy Preference Pane.

Related Documentation

No, this is a one-time task that is required for CCC to be able to make adjustments to the destination volume that are required for macOS Catalina. Once you have established a Catalina backup, you can reenable FileVault and your future backups will work without any additional intervention.

If you are willing to forgo the creation of a bootable backup of your macOS Catalina startup disk, you can configure your backup task to back up only the Data volume of your startup disk:

  1. Open CCC and click the Show Sidebar button in CCC's toolbar if it is not already visible
  2. Select your backup task in the sidebar
  3. Drag the Macintosh HD - Data volume from CCC's sidebar into the Source selector
  4. Save the task

With this configuration, CCC will not impose any requirements on the format or encrypted nature of the destination volume. Because this destination will not be bootable, we recommend that you remove any existing System folders from the destination volume to avoid any ambiguity about the functionality that this volume provides.

If your backup disk is a 'mobile' 2.5' rotational disk (i.e. that spins at 5400RPM or less), we recommend that you format that device as 'Mac OS Extended, Journaled' (aka HFS+) and use it for, for example, you would do the following:

  1. Open Disk Utility
  2. Choose Show all devices from the View menu
  3. Select the CCC Backup volume in the sidebar — this is the System volume in the group.
  4. Click the button in the toolbar to delete that volume
  5. Select the CCC Backup - Data volume
  6. Click the Unmount button in the toolbar
  7. Click the Mount button in the toolbar to remount that volume
  8. Change the name of the volume back to CCC Backup

You won't find a legacy _CCC SafetyNet folder on the destination if snapshot support is enabled on that volume. Instead, select the destination Data volume in CCC's sidebar to see a list of SafetyNet snapshots.

If snapshot support is not enabled on your destination volume, then the SafetyNet folder can be difficult to navigate to in the Finder. It's still located at the root level of your destination's Data volume, but the Data volume is hidden by default in the Finder. To reveal it in the Finder, click on CCC's Destination selector and choose the Reveal Data Volume option.

If you have ever restored content back to your production startup disk while booted from a CCC backup, then there may have been a _CCC SafetyNet folder placed at the root of that volume. When you upgrade to Catalina, the macOS installer will relocate any content that is at the root of the startup disk to Users > Shared > Relocated Items > Security. You will also find a PDF in that folder explaining why the content was moved there. In short, the content was moved there because it is very difficult to find content at the root level of the Data volume of your startup disk on macOS Catalina.

If you attempt to delete that SafetyNet folder (and you certainly may delete that folder), the Finder may claim — falsely — that the folder cannot be deleted because some items are in use. In fact, nothing in that folder is in use, but some of the older system items may be protected by System Integrity Protection. You can learn how to dispose of this content in this section of CCC's documentation:

After upgrading to macOS 10.13 High Sierra, you may notice that there is a category named 'Other Volumes in Container' in Storage and 'Other Volume' in Disk Utility on your Mac. And the problem is that when you are getting the warning 'your disk is almost full' from the Mac, other volumes in container are taking ten or even hundred gigabytes of your Mac storage space. Some users also noticed that the size of other volumes in container keeps growing on their Macs. And the worse part is that you don't even know what other volumes in container mean, let alone how to delete other volumes in container.

So in this post, we are going to explain to you what other volumes in container are on Mac and how to get rid of other volumes to reclaim your Mac storage.

People Also Read:


1. What Are Other Volumes in Container?

In APFS, the new file system that Apple introduced to macOS High Sierra and later, a container is similar to a partition in other file systems. A physical disk could have multiple containers and a container includes multiple virtual volumes, which all share the storage space of the container. For example, a standard macOS startup APFS container includes volumes as follow:

  • Macintosh HD: the volume with macOS software system installed, which usually shown in Disk Utility as Macintosh HD.

  • Preboot: the volume that manages boot, which is created during macOS High Sierra update to support booting to Macintosh HD. It is usually hidden.

  • Recovery: the volume that contains recovery system of your Mac, which you can boot into by holding CMD + R during startup.

  • VM (Virtual Machine): the volume that supplements your RAM to store files like sleepimage, swapfile, which is too large for RAM to run. So VM volume usually takes up most of the storage space.

Other volumes in container mean the last three volumes, Preboot, Recovery, VM in APFS container. The other volumes cannot be removed because they are needed for macOS to function properly.

Although we know what other volumes in container are, it doesn't mean that we can easily get rid of other volumes in container. In fact, we cannot completely delete other volumes in container on Mac because they are important for the system to run. However, there are ways to stop other volumes from increasing or reduce the space that other volumes using.


2. Thoroughly Clear Your Mac to Release Memeory Space

To get your storage from other volumes, you can use FonePaw MacMaster. FonePaw MacMaster is an application that can clear caches, logs, iOS backups, iOS update files, mail attachments, apps, and app data, duplicate photos and files, large and old files, browsing history, etc. on Mac to get more free space. It is a useful application when you are facing 'your startup disk is almost full' warning while other volumes in container is eating up your space. Just let the application scan through your Mac and find out files or application that are taking up most of your space. Then you just have to click Clean to get rid of them.


3. How to Remove Other Volumes in Container in Storage

There are also some fixes shared by Mac users who have successfully regained storage space from other volumes in container. Hopefully one of them may work on your case.

Create a new user account

Create a new user account and then use the new account to sign in to your Mac. It is reported that by signing in with the new account, other volumes in container in storage reduce. To create a new user account:

  • Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups.

  • Click on the lock icon and enter the passcode of the Mac when prompted.

  • Click Add [+] button under Login Options to add a new admin account.

Then log into the Mac with a new account and check if other volumes are taking up lots of space.

Uninstall suspicious third-party apps

Go to Activity Monitor and check on the Memory tab. If there is any process that is using extraordinarily huge space of your Mac storage, the app that is running the process could be the culprit. So kill the process and then check if Other Volumes in Container is still taking up lots of space. If other volumes give back your space, then go on and completely uninstall the app. By completely uninstalling an app, it doesn't mean simply dragging the app to Trash. You need to delete the app as well as its data. Read more: How to completely uninstall app.

Turn off content caching for 'Cache iCloud content'

iCloud content caching is a new feature in macOS High Sierra to speed up software updates on Macs and more. If you have it turned on, you can uncheck content caching to reduce the size of other volumes in container.

Macintosh

In such situations, you can easily rely on an effective tool to recover data from Mac Volume erased by disk utility on Mac. SFWare Partition Recovery for Mac software ensures recovery of Macintosh HD partition from all possible scenarios of loss. In addition, it can restore data from formatted, damaged, or lost Mac HD partition. The Macintosh HD volume is where the system and system support files are kept and the user has no access to them. It's part of the new security that Catalina brings to the table. What version of Catalina are you running? Re: Volume 'Macintosh HD' is full Mon Sep 22, 2014 8:41 am Hey OP, just as a future reference, SHIFT+⌘+3 will take a screenshot of your monitor, then just head on over to imgur.com and upload that sucker You'll never have to use the ol' point and shoot again.

Maybe. If you are making a simple backup of your startup disk to a dedicated backup disk, then no, you do not have to make any changes to the destination unless CCC specifically recommends it. CCC will automatically make the changes required for your destination to be a bootable backup of macOS Catalina. If your destination volume is encrypted, however, see the question later in this document for information specific to encrypted destinations.

If you have multiple tasks that back up to the same destination, however, then now is a good time to revisit your backup 'hygiene'. Ideally, each source that you back up will have a dedicated volume on the destination. https://software-kits.mystrikingly.com/blog/fallout-new-vegas-body-mods. This is particularly important when one of the sources is a Catalina startup disk. See this section of CCC's documentation for guidance on how to configure your destination device to accommodate backups of multiple source volumes:

I want to back up multiple Macs or source volumes to the same hard drive
Video: Preparing your backup disk on macOS Catalina

No. When you select your startup disk (e.g. Macintosh HD) as the source for your backup task, CCC will automatically back up both volumes in that volume group.

Many external hard drives are shipped with a Windows-centric format and partitioning scheme. That partitioning scheme can't accommodate Apple's APFS filesystem, so before you can use your backup disk for making a bootable backup of your Catalina startup disk, you must make sure that it is partitioned with the correct partitioning scheme. This section of CCC's documentation walks you through the steps for configuring your backup disk:

Disk Utility's interface for performing this simple task is surprisingly unintuitive, so here is a summary of the process with some emphasis on the steps where people often go awry:

  1. Open Disk Utility
  2. Choose Show all devices from Disk Utility's View menu. This is a very important step!
  3. Choose the parent device of your destination volume in the sidebar – don't click on the backup volume itself, click on its parent device. If you don't click on the parent device, you won't be able to change the partition scheme.
  4. Click on the Erase button in the toolbar. Don't click on the Partition button! That would seem like the obvious choice, but you cannot actually change the partitioning scheme in the Partition interface.
  5. Set the Scheme to GUID Partition Map and the Format to APFS, then click the Erase button.

If you're still having trouble correcting the partition scheme, you may find this video demonstration helpful.

Because macOS Catalina leverages volume groups for the startup volume, creating a bootable backup requires an APFS formatted destination volume. HFS+ is no longer an option for booting macOS starting with macOS Catalina. For your convenience, CCC will automatically convert your HFS+ formatted backup volume to APFS as necessary and create a volume group on the destination. This conversion is the same conversion that took place on your startup disk when you upgraded to High Sierra or Mojave, with one notable exception: CCC tells you that it's going to convert the destination, and gives you the opportunity to decline the conversion. The conversion is non-destructive — any data that you have on the destination volume will remain in place, the only thing that changes is the format of the volume.

Typically there is no reason to decline the conversion. The conversion is non-destructive, and it's required for making a backup of the system. If your backup volume is dedicated to your CCC backup task, then converting the destination to APFS is the right choice.

However, if your destination volume is not dedicated to your CCC backup task or if you're not intending to back up the macOS System files, you should consider how the other uses of your destination might be affected by the conversion. For example, Time Machine is not currently compatible with APFS as a destination, so converting a destination volume that contains a Time Machine backup would break the Time Machine backup. CCC specifically avoids converting Time Machine backup volumes. Another example – if you're only backing up a single folder or handful of folders from your startup disk, you should configure a folder-to-folder backup instead, which won't require any conversion of the destination.

You should also avoid the conversion if your destination device is a slower 2.5' rotational HDD, i.e. with a rotational speed of 5400RPM (or slower!). APFS does not perform well on HDD devices, and that performance is unacceptable on these slowest HDD devices due to their much slower seek performance. Keep these slower disks formatted as Mac OS Extended, Journaled. These devices are suitable for button in the toolbar

If your destination volume is not APFS formatted, and you cannot or prefer to not convert the volume to APFS, you can create a dedicated partition on your destination disk for CCC to use. To create the partition:

  1. Open Disk Utility
  2. Select your destination disk in Disk Utility's sidebar
  3. Click the Partition button in the toolbar
  4. Click the '+' button to add a partition to the disk
  5. Set the name and size of the partition to your preference
  6. Choose APFS as the format
  7. Click the Apply button

If you were keeping other data at the root level of your backup disk that isn't on your startup disk, then that data is still on your backup disk, but it will be harder to find in the Finder due to the volume group changes that are applied for a backup of the Catalina startup disk. If your backup disk is named 'CCC Backup', right-click on the 'CCC Backup - Data' volume in CCC's sidebar and select Reveal in Finder to reveal that content.

It depends on how much data you have on your destination volume, the performance of the destination device, and the degree to which the destination volume is fragmented. It can take a while, but CCC won't wait for more than two hours for the conversion to complete. If it's taking longer than two hours, then CCC will recommend that you erase the destination volume instead, which will resolve any performance issues that are directly caused by filesystem fragmentation. If CCC issues this recommendation and you prefer to wait out the conversion rather than erase the volume, you're welcome to convert the volume in Disk Utility instead (the option is in the Edit Menu).

Unfortunately that is not possible due to a macOS limitation, Disk Utility cannot add an encrypted volume to an APFS volume group. When you select a Catalina+ startup disk as a source and an encrypted volume as a destination, CCC will disallow the selection and suggest that you erase or decrypt the destination volume. Free wildlife games. What channel is 911 on directv.

Fastest and easiest solution: Erase the destination as APFS (not encrypted)

Erasing the destination volume is the simplest and fastest way to resume your Catalina backups, and you can find detailed instructions for doing that here: Preparing a hard drive for use with Carbon Copy Cloner.

After you have run your backup task to a non-encrypted volume, you can then boot from the backup and re-enable FileVault in the Security & Privacy Preference Pane.

Related Documentation

Decrypting the destination volume will take considerably more time (possibly days) and effort, but you can decrypt the destination volume with one of the following methods:

A: Boot from the backup volume, open the Security Preference Pane, disable FileVault

B: Decrypt the volume in the Terminal application. E.g. for an HFS+ formatted destination:
diskutil cs decryptVolume '/Volumes/CCC Backup'

Or for an APFS-formatted destination, get a list of user IDs associated with the encrypted volume, then use one of the 'Local Open Directory User' UUIDs from the output of the first command with the second command:
diskutil ap listUsers '/Volumes/CCC Backup'
diskutil ap decryptVolume '/Volumes/CCC Backup' -user B44348A3-68DF-4B7B-800D-47FE38711178

Replace 'B44348A3-68DF-4B7B-800D-47FE38711178' with a UUID produced by the first command.

Wait for decryption to complete

You'll have to wait for the decryption process to complete before you proceed with your backup task. Decryption will continue in the background while you're booted from your production startup disk. macOS doesn't offer a convenient method to see conversion progress, but you can type diskutil apfs list (or diskutil cs list if the applicable volume is HFS+ formatted) in the Terminal application to see conversion progress.

Re-enabling FileVault on your Catalina backup volume

After you have run your backup task to a non-encrypted volume, you can then boot from the backup and re-enable FileVault in the Security & Privacy Preference Pane.

Related Documentation

No, this is a one-time task that is required for CCC to be able to make adjustments to the destination volume that are required for macOS Catalina. Once you have established a Catalina backup, you can reenable FileVault and your future backups will work without any additional intervention.

If you are willing to forgo the creation of a bootable backup of your macOS Catalina startup disk, you can configure your backup task to back up only the Data volume of your startup disk:

  1. Open CCC and click the Show Sidebar button in CCC's toolbar if it is not already visible
  2. Select your backup task in the sidebar
  3. Drag the Macintosh HD - Data volume from CCC's sidebar into the Source selector
  4. Save the task

With this configuration, CCC will not impose any requirements on the format or encrypted nature of the destination volume. Because this destination will not be bootable, we recommend that you remove any existing System folders from the destination volume to avoid any ambiguity about the functionality that this volume provides.

If your backup disk is a 'mobile' 2.5' rotational disk (i.e. that spins at 5400RPM or less), we recommend that you format that device as 'Mac OS Extended, Journaled' (aka HFS+) and use it for, for example, you would do the following:

  1. Open Disk Utility
  2. Choose Show all devices from the View menu
  3. Select the CCC Backup volume in the sidebar — this is the System volume in the group.
  4. Click the button in the toolbar to delete that volume
  5. Select the CCC Backup - Data volume
  6. Click the Unmount button in the toolbar
  7. Click the Mount button in the toolbar to remount that volume
  8. Change the name of the volume back to CCC Backup

You won't find a legacy _CCC SafetyNet folder on the destination if snapshot support is enabled on that volume. Instead, select the destination Data volume in CCC's sidebar to see a list of SafetyNet snapshots.

If snapshot support is not enabled on your destination volume, then the SafetyNet folder can be difficult to navigate to in the Finder. It's still located at the root level of your destination's Data volume, but the Data volume is hidden by default in the Finder. To reveal it in the Finder, click on CCC's Destination selector and choose the Reveal Data Volume option.

If you have ever restored content back to your production startup disk while booted from a CCC backup, then there may have been a _CCC SafetyNet folder placed at the root of that volume. When you upgrade to Catalina, the macOS installer will relocate any content that is at the root of the startup disk to Users > Shared > Relocated Items > Security. You will also find a PDF in that folder explaining why the content was moved there. In short, the content was moved there because it is very difficult to find content at the root level of the Data volume of your startup disk on macOS Catalina.

If you attempt to delete that SafetyNet folder (and you certainly may delete that folder), the Finder may claim — falsely — that the folder cannot be deleted because some items are in use. In fact, nothing in that folder is in use, but some of the older system items may be protected by System Integrity Protection. You can learn how to dispose of this content in this section of CCC's documentation:

After upgrading to macOS 10.13 High Sierra, you may notice that there is a category named 'Other Volumes in Container' in Storage and 'Other Volume' in Disk Utility on your Mac. And the problem is that when you are getting the warning 'your disk is almost full' from the Mac, other volumes in container are taking ten or even hundred gigabytes of your Mac storage space. Some users also noticed that the size of other volumes in container keeps growing on their Macs. And the worse part is that you don't even know what other volumes in container mean, let alone how to delete other volumes in container.

So in this post, we are going to explain to you what other volumes in container are on Mac and how to get rid of other volumes to reclaim your Mac storage.

People Also Read:


1. What Are Other Volumes in Container?

In APFS, the new file system that Apple introduced to macOS High Sierra and later, a container is similar to a partition in other file systems. A physical disk could have multiple containers and a container includes multiple virtual volumes, which all share the storage space of the container. For example, a standard macOS startup APFS container includes volumes as follow:

  • Macintosh HD: the volume with macOS software system installed, which usually shown in Disk Utility as Macintosh HD.

  • Preboot: the volume that manages boot, which is created during macOS High Sierra update to support booting to Macintosh HD. It is usually hidden.

  • Recovery: the volume that contains recovery system of your Mac, which you can boot into by holding CMD + R during startup.

  • VM (Virtual Machine): the volume that supplements your RAM to store files like sleepimage, swapfile, which is too large for RAM to run. So VM volume usually takes up most of the storage space.

Other volumes in container mean the last three volumes, Preboot, Recovery, VM in APFS container. The other volumes cannot be removed because they are needed for macOS to function properly.

Although we know what other volumes in container are, it doesn't mean that we can easily get rid of other volumes in container. In fact, we cannot completely delete other volumes in container on Mac because they are important for the system to run. However, there are ways to stop other volumes from increasing or reduce the space that other volumes using.


2. Thoroughly Clear Your Mac to Release Memeory Space

To get your storage from other volumes, you can use FonePaw MacMaster. FonePaw MacMaster is an application that can clear caches, logs, iOS backups, iOS update files, mail attachments, apps, and app data, duplicate photos and files, large and old files, browsing history, etc. on Mac to get more free space. It is a useful application when you are facing 'your startup disk is almost full' warning while other volumes in container is eating up your space. Just let the application scan through your Mac and find out files or application that are taking up most of your space. Then you just have to click Clean to get rid of them.


3. How to Remove Other Volumes in Container in Storage

There are also some fixes shared by Mac users who have successfully regained storage space from other volumes in container. Hopefully one of them may work on your case.

Create a new user account

Create a new user account and then use the new account to sign in to your Mac. It is reported that by signing in with the new account, other volumes in container in storage reduce. To create a new user account:

  • Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups.

  • Click on the lock icon and enter the passcode of the Mac when prompted.

  • Click Add [+] button under Login Options to add a new admin account.

Then log into the Mac with a new account and check if other volumes are taking up lots of space.

Uninstall suspicious third-party apps

Go to Activity Monitor and check on the Memory tab. If there is any process that is using extraordinarily huge space of your Mac storage, the app that is running the process could be the culprit. So kill the process and then check if Other Volumes in Container is still taking up lots of space. If other volumes give back your space, then go on and completely uninstall the app. By completely uninstalling an app, it doesn't mean simply dragging the app to Trash. You need to delete the app as well as its data. Read more: How to completely uninstall app.

Turn off content caching for 'Cache iCloud content'

iCloud content caching is a new feature in macOS High Sierra to speed up software updates on Macs and more. If you have it turned on, you can uncheck content caching to reduce the size of other volumes in container.

  • Go to System Preferences > Sharing > Content Caching.

  • Uncheck Content Cacheing or turn off Cache iCloud content totally.

Hardware solutions

It sounds irrelevant but some users found other volumes stop growing with the following hardware. Elementos del estilo tipografico robert bringhurst pdf file.

  • Replace the old battery. This does the trick to those MacBook with the really old battery.

  • Unplug USB drives. A user found that without USB drivers connected to Mac, other volumes storage stop increasing. However, the trick didn't work for other users. But it is worth a shot.

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If none of the above solutions work, you can try to erase the startup disk in Recovery Mode and reinstall the macOS. Or you can try a simple way - use FonePaw MacMaster to give your Mac a thorough cleanup to get more free space.





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