I noticed that my hard drive is divided into two partitions. They are Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD – Data. I also noticed that while the Macintosh HD Partition is mounted the Macintosh HD – Data portion is not mounted. Is this normal? I’m viewing this in disk utilities in recovery mode.
I was working with apples tech-support on an issue I had and was in recovery mode when I noticed that my Macintosh HD – Data partion was not mounted. While the Mac Hd was. Is this normal?
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George Motherway
Starting with Catalina, this is how it works. The System is on a special read-only partition. The rest of your files are on the “Data” partition. This is a great security measure. The way it is designed, you see both as one “Macintosh HD” as normal with your System in the right place, just not modifiable.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210650
But why is the HD – Data portion listed as “not mounted” while the system portion is mounted?
George: That’s just the way it is represented in Disk Utility. It isn’t “mounted” as a separate drive. This isn’t something you need to manage or take an action here — it is working as it should.