HELP! Storage taken up by mysterious "other volumes"

lilskye2 wrote:

I wasn't confusing the two - what was happening was that the "other volumes" were eating up most of my drive space. (see the Disk Utility shots up at the top of my original post)

Now it seems okay. I did first aid in recovery - I could not do it on the overall top "Apple SSD AP2048N Media" at the very top - that said "Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting. Couldn't mount disk: (-69842). Operation failed"

But the container and volumes and Data were fine.

Then I looked and there was a second "Admin" User. So I deleted that.

Now everything looks like we're normal.

Now the Disk Utility shows Not Mounted as only 1.64GB (not 869GB - oy!)

And now Info on the HD looks like it should with 1.61 TB available!

I'm suspecting it was the weird extra Admin User!

Not sure if First Aid did anything - but will try that again on the very top "Apple SSD" in case that is not mountable - unless that top part is never supposed to run in First Aid???

Anyway this is fixed!!!!!

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The macOS has a Recovery, this is local:

For more major issue Internet Recovery is typically what is in order— I'll let you sort that out.

a bit strange there unless Recovery was the issue, there is also the Internet Recovery (Option Command R) so unclear exactly how you proceeded.

As a test I ran the First Aid fully booted up with my active macOS user account

I had no issue running the first Aid., it complete in a second or two..

The interface is not always exact.

a Container is the "Partition" in thr most genral sense... you would expect it to show as not mounted..

GUID partition scheme will create a the Container— all Volumes share space with in the Container, this is normal.

ex

you can post the results of your Terminal command:

diskutil list

Did you run the DiskFirst Aid to sort issues...

Boot into Internet Recovery (Option Command R) and from the dropdown menu: Utilities>  Disk Utility> run the First Aid on your Macintosh HD, Container, (and the "Macintosh HD-Data" volume as well) If errors are found and repaired, run again until no errors reported.

ref: How to repair a Mac storage device with Disk Utility - Apple Support

Disk Utility>View>Show All Devices

Parent drive —I would start here

Container level

Volume level

Disk Utility only reads the Directory area of the drive, and checks it for self-consistency. It does not read any data area blocks.

ref: Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

ref: See if your Mac shares space across APFS volumes - Apple Support

ref: See used and available storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

The Terminal command output looks good.....there is no extra partition or volume. My guess is you may have found some sort of bug. Hard to say if it is with the "Erase All Contents & Settings", or something with restoring from the backup of your old system, or just a bug with Disk Utility (Disk Utility isn't a very good app, but this is the first I've seen it report incorrect details like in your screenshot).

Edit: Or perhaps there is still some sort of management from your employer that is causing this issue where the "Erase All Contents & Settings" is unable to touch. You may want to perform a clean install of macOS by first erasing the disk. If it is an Intel Mac, then erase the whole physical SSD, otherwise you need to delete the "Macintosh HD" item which should prompt you for deleting the "Volume Group" (yes, delete the volume group).

If it is a 2020+ iMac, then you can also perform a DFU Firmware Restore which resets the security enclave chip, system firmware, and internal SSD. With an Intel Mac, you would then need to reinstall macOS through Internet Recovery Mode (Command + Option + R)....for an M-series Mac this process would push a clean copy of macOS onto the internal SSD. Unfortunately this DFU Firmware Restore process requires access to another Mac currently running macOS 15.x Sequoia.

I think a clean install is the best option since it may reveal whether the iMac is still being managed by your employer. Usually on first boot after installing macOS you will be alerted to the Mac being managed. A managed Mac can block & prevent access to certain items until that managed Mac has been removed from the MDM system.

That looks normal...

What do you see with Command i for the information pane when you highlight the Macintosh HD

(from the Desktop or Finder>Sidebar>Locations.)..?

"free space" is the available minus the purgeable—macOS releases that purgeable space, but on its own schedule.

ref:

FWIW, there is NO WAY that the problem was related to that second admin user. Instead, it was running first aid on the drive that fixed things. And also FWIW having a second admin user is something that everyone should do. It can be a lifesaver if problems happen with the main account.

you are confusing what you are looking at here...

if it ain't broke, don't fix it.