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MBP i9 - ISSUE: What is Other Volumes in Container?


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MBP i9 - ISSUE: What is Other Volumes in Container?
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surjones
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: In the hands of Apple.
 
2019-12-20, 17:37

234.43 gigs are missing from my SSD... doesn't even make sense!!!! Never seen this before

Help me get this back!
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kscherer
Which way is up?
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
 
2019-12-21, 12:25

Open Disk Utility and run the repair option. Start there.

If nothing, open the Finder and make sure you are in the root view (Macintosh HD); select List view; click on the Action menu; click on Show View Options; make sure that Calculate All Sizes is checked; Sit back and wait. Could take a while, but this will sort and organize all files by size. If there is a permissions issue or some other weirdness, then it will take a while. This option forces the system to accurately calculate the space each file is taking, and could take hours.

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PB PM
Sneaky Punk
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Vancouver, BC
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2019-12-21, 13:02

Could be Finder strangeness, or space set aside for virtual memory usage. If it is virtual memory, a reboot would fix it. Worst case scenario, the drive has seen that some of the flash memory is no longer usable due to being written to too many times. If you are writing more than 20TB/per week this could easily be done to a consumer grade SSD. If you are working with large files, such as video footage, putting it on the SSD, editing and then moving it to external storage that is easily possible.
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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2019-12-21, 13:02

FWIW, this "other volumes in container" is a relatively new side-effect of the logical volume partitioning in the new Apple File System (APFS) that you automatically get migrated to when installing macOS 10.13 or newer. The olden days of partitioning a drive into discrete, static partitions are gone. There's now another software layer between you and the drive which adds a lot of flexibility to where the partitions exist, dynamically adjusting their size, etc., and macOS's system services leverage that for things like the recovery partition, VM sleep image, and swap (I think).

If you open Terminal and enter the command `diskutil list`, you should see some output like this:
Code:
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.3 GB disk0 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1 2: Apple_APFS Container disk1 500.1 GB disk0s2 /dev/disk1 (synthesized): #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: APFS Container Scheme - +500.1 GB disk1 Physical Store disk0s2 1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 248.2 GB disk1s1 2: APFS Volume Preboot 46.6 MB disk1s2 3: APFS Volume Recovery 510.4 MB disk1s3 4: APFS Volume VM 3.2 GB disk1s4
In that second block, `disk1s1` is "Macintosh HD" or my primary partition volume. The other items 2 through 4 are additional volumes that macOS is managing for me, whether I like it or not.

Run that command and see what additional volumes might exist that are eating your disk. If you're not sure how to interpret the results or act on them, share them here and I'll take a look. You can see a similar overview from Disk Utility or from Apple menu: About this Mac: Storage.

In my case, this "other volumes" coincidentally matches (roughly) the sum of the disk1s2 through disk1s4 from my `diskutil list` output.

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Brad
Selfish Heathen
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2019-12-21, 13:17

Also, a general suggestion: if you haven't completely rebooted recently, do that first. Some volumes (like the VM sleep image) may clear themselves after a reboot.
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surjones
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: In the hands of Apple.
 
2019-12-22, 16:55

Code:
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER    0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0    1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1    2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         499.4 GB   disk0s2    3:           Windows Recovery                         545.3 MB   disk0s3 /dev/disk1 (synthesized):    #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER    0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +499.4 GB   disk1                                  Physical Store disk0s2    1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data     234.3 GB   disk1s1    2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 85.5 MB    disk1s2    3:                APFS Volume Recovery                528.5 MB   disk1s3    4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4    5:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data     83.1 GB    disk1s5    6:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            10.8 GB    disk1s6
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surjones
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: In the hands of Apple.
 
2019-12-26, 22:05

Okay here is this is as close to a 95% resolution that you (the person reading this, who has the same issue) will get!

Start your machine in Recovery Mode - (make sure you have backups of files first) Enter recovery mode by: Restarting and holding CMD+R

Open Disc Utilities
Delete extra volumes
I had one that was greyed out - I started with that one.
After that was done, I rebooted and checked and I have now 405gb of FREE SPACE!

I hope that this helps whoever is reading this.
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