Catalina & Carbon Copy Cloner

[MacInWin]

Patrick, here is, as an example, my Home folder directory:

I did make Library visible but the rest are visible as default. Command-Shift-"." unhides system files like .Trash, etc, but nothing that I would call a "user" file or data.

BTW, I looked it up and Library was first hidden in Lion. But a simple Terminal command makes it permanently visible:

chflags nohidden ~/Library

Note that only unhides ~/Library

 

[MacInWin]

Here is that same home directory after Command-shift-.



As you can see, what is hidden are not really "user data" type files.

 

[Rod]

I think Ian and Jake in post #2 explained the phenomenon very well. This is exactly how my HD displays in Disk Utility, one Volume is Macintosh HD and another that is Macintosh HD - Data.
Pine Man, in a finder window I only see one entry, the combined volume Macintosh HD. I know this is a silly question but did you have your CCC backup plugged in at the time because if you did you would see two entries for Macintosh HD one being the volume on your backup.

I think this is exactly how the HD should look. NOTE; the size of the Macintosh HD is only about the size one would expect for the OS.
The Macintosh HD - Data volume is 336 Gb.

 

[pm-r]

Nope. Those have been visible, and still are, without any strange keys. Where are you getting this information? I've never heard of it before.

I came across this a day ago helping a friends friend, a new switcher fellow with his week old MacBook Pro, basically to get things set up for him so he could work with it with a quick set up for stuff he needed.

His "new" 2017 MBPro had Mojave installed and it was all up to date.

To make some of his stuff easier to access I thought it would be nice to set things up so that he would have easier access to some of his data. When I went to his "Home" username folder I was rather surprised to see only about four folders and several such as: Desktop, Documents, Downloads folders were not showing.

I thought that was rather odd and said I would look into it has he had to leave for a meeting.

A few Google searches later, I came to some sites that describe the situation and provided methods to show these new Invisibles.

I believe one of them was:
How-To Show Your User Library in macOS Mojave, High Sierra and Sierra - AppleToolBox

And in some of the screenshots there, some folders such as the Desktop folder was not showing, but apparently will when using the show invisible keyboard shortcut.

I also checked with a friend of mine by phone and he doesn't have the Desktop folder showing in his username folder either and he is using Sierra so I assumed it was sort of normal.

I hope that all this makes a bit of sense, but it's sure confusing to me.

Sorry if this seems to be going a bit off topic, but maybe the admins could change it if that's the case.



- Patrick
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[MacInWin]

Patrick, that article was about ~/Library and incorrectly made the claim that the chflags Terminal command no longer worked. I just used it in Mojave to get the screenshots I posted, so it definitely works there, and did in every OS from Lion to Mojave. And I have no idea what your friend did to hide the Desktop folder, or any other folder, but the default in every system from Lion to Mojave was that they are visible to the user. Period. Given that the author of that article you linked was dead wrong on the command not working, I don't trust much else in that article, either. I think what may be confusing is that the home folder (the one with the login name) no longer defaults to the sidebar. You have to select it in Finder/Preferences/Sidebar. What defaults to the Sidebar is the content of the Documents folder for the user. The Desktop and Downloads are not in the Documents folder, but in the home folder. Technically, the home folder isn't hidden, you can see it in Finder if you open MacitoshHD/Users/username, and if you look in it from there, all is visible. And all becomes visible in Finder if you simply go there. Putting it in the Sidebar makes that easy to do. I think what some people, including the author of that article, confuse is "hidden" and "shown." The default is that only ~/Library is hidden. But the Home folder is, by default, not shown, but can be shown with a simple option toggle that doesn't require any Terminal commands.

Does that make any sense?

 

[MacInWin]

One more thing, Patrick, about maybe defaults changing. In Post #13 I put two images from a virgin installation of Catalina. One was of the Finder view of MacintoshHD as it exists on that desktop. In that image you can see my home folder as well as Desktop, Documents, and Downloads in the Sidebar. That was default as that is a totally new installation with basically nothing in it at this point. So Catalina defaults to all of those folders you listed, except, of course, Library being both visible and in the sidebar. You can control what appears in Finder with the preferences:

 

[Rod]

It was my understanding and experience that displaying Desktop, Downloads etc in the Finder Tool Bar are just a matter of selecting (ticking) them in Finder Preferences.
If you need to locate it, it will be found here; /Users/my name/Desktop
If as has happened one accidentally drags the folder off the sidebar you will find it unticked in Finder Preferences. Ticking it again will put it back (at the bottom of the list).

 

[Rod]

I have now completed a full CCC backup of my MBP running Catalina using CCC 5.
The first thing it did was convert my USB EHD to APFS (thus erasing the HDD) which it notifies you before beginning the process.
As can be seen below there are four volumes shown in the sidebar. Macintosh HD - Data, Macintosh HD, CCC Backup - Data and CCC Backup.
All as it should be. I then booted from the CCC clone successfully and waited through the "Verification" process. This was new to me, it essentially verified each of my Startup Items and all third party apps whose menus appear on the Menu Bar (background apps) iStat menus, Fantastical, Mac's Fan Control even Carbon Copy Cloner. Once everything seemed complete I rebooted back to Macintosh HD.
Below is how CCC looks now.

 

[Rod]

On ejecting the CCC backup I am presented with this dialogue box.



This confirms what I thought when looking at the size of the volumes, they are the same size indicating to me that they are essentially two volumes in one sharing the same volume.

 

[IWT]

Out of interest, Rod; which did you choose?

Ian

 

[Rod]

I see where you are coming from, I chose to eject both but afterwards I thought why would I want to keep one or the other active? As it was I wanted to put the EHD away so I needed to disconnect it. If you can think of a reason to keep one but not the other mounted I’d love to hear it. Perhaps it’s just unavoidable based on the volume structure of Catalina.

 

[pine man]

Seems to have been a lot of activity while I've been asleep!

I have attached an image of Finder as it is now and you can see the four volumes which, according to CCC are as they should be. The Daily Back Up is the CCC backup and the others are self-explanatory. Immediately after the restore I had two volumes of Macintosh HD, which were identical in every respect and it is this issue that CCC suggested may be a Finder bug. I mistakenly thought that there should have been a Mackintosh HD - Data volume in Finder as well.

The displays in Disk Utility and CCC both show a Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data volume. CCC also shows a Daily Back Up and a Daily Back - Data volume in the side bar and a single Macintosh HD as the Source and a single Daily Back Up as the Destination.

Looking on the bright side - at least I know that CCC works ok with Catalina

 

[Rod]

I was a little surprised that it converted my Transcend 1Tb EHD to APFS prior to backup. I was rightly or wrongly under the impression that HFS+ was better if not advised for spinners but I could be wrong.


Sent from my iPad using Mac-Forums

 

[IWT]

I see where you are coming from, I chose to eject both but afterwards I thought why would I want to keep one or the other active? As it was I wanted to put the EHD away so I needed to disconnect it. If you can think of a reason to keep one but not the other mounted I’d love to hear it. Perhaps it’s just unavoidable based on the volume structure of Catalina.

Totally agree. Intuitively, I would have chosen "Eject All". Like you, I'm surprised there was a choice if "Ejection of CCC" was your intention.

I also recognise the need to leave them all mounted if, like me, you have a scheduled CCC BU planned for 1am every day. In which case I would choose "Cancel".

Interesting....

Ian

 

[Lifeisabeach]

I had an issue here with a pair of "Data" volumes showing up, but it was one of my own creation. When I reinstalled Catalina from scratch, I re-created my user from scratch also. I prefer to have my username and home folder with my first name only and first letter capitalized. I have to make a point of making that adjustment when creating the user, and in the past that has never been an issue. But this time, Catalina refused to let me make the first letter of my home folder capitalized. Sooo... after I was set up, I went into the Users & Groups preference pane, unlocked it, right-clicked on my user account, and made the changes there under Advanced Options. Then I rebooted.

Everything seemed fine, except when I browsed my folders on logging back in, I saw 3 things. First was my home folder was still showing in lower case in Finder. Secondly, the home folder had a normal folder icon, not the special "Home" folder icon. I fixed this by simply renaming the folder and voila! Fixed. The third thing is where things get weird and relevant here. I also now had two "Mac HD - Data" mount points. Both had the same capacity (each the size of the SSD capacity, which made no sense!), but one was empty.

So what I had to do was dismount the empty one from Disk Utility (or maybe I did it from Finder?), then right-click on the dismounted one and and selected "Delete APFS Volume". Problem solved. Below is a screen cap of how to view this in Disk Utility, though I don't currently have the duplicated volume. The top arrow shows what you need to click to get the view of the "container" contents.

EDIT: just to emphasize... the screen shot below shows how this should normally look. Obviously don't try to delete the single "Data" volume.

 

[MacInWin]

Both had the same capacity (each the size of the SSD capacity, which made no sense!), but one was empty.

Actually, it does make sense if you remember how APFS works. The Container has a certain capacity. Each Volume in the Container can use as much of that space until the Container is full. So if you have two Volumes, both will show a capacity of whatever the Container has available. As one or more Volumes begin to use space, ALL of them will show the decrease. So think of the capacity of a Volume as the remaining capacity of the Container and it makes sense.

When we get stuck thinking in terms of the old "partition" scheme, where partitions were fixed in size, the new scheme gets strange, but if we can shift to thinking in terms of more flexible Containers and Volumes, it does make sense.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Actually, it does make sense if you remember how APFS works. The Container has a certain capacity. Each Volume in the Container can use as much of that space until the Container is full. So if you have two Volumes, both will show a capacity of whatever the Container has available. As one or more Volumes begin to use space, ALL of them will show the decrease. So think of the capacity of a Volume as the remaining capacity of the Container and it makes sense.

When we get stuck thinking in terms of the old "partition" scheme, where partitions were fixed in size, the new scheme gets strange, but if we can shift to thinking in terms of more flexible Containers and Volumes, it does make sense.

Oh I understood it just fine once I got past the initial "Whaaaaaat the...???!!!" shock. It threw me for a loop but easily fixed once I dug through it all. What's really strange is that while Catalina refused to let me use a capital letter for my username initially, it had no problem letting me use one for my wife's username.

 

[MacInWin]

I think that a lot of folks who move to Catalina are going to be "shocked" by some of the internal changes. If you just boot it, and use it, the fact that there are two Volumes won't impact you as the OS merges them into one icon on the Desktop and in Finder. Only when you go into DU, or look at a clone on an external drive, will the two Volumes be seen as one. And given that's how it works, the "capacity" issue goes away.

As for upper/lower case names, that one I have no explanation for the action. A glitch, perhaps?

 

[pm-r]

As for upper/lower case names, that one I have no explanation for the action. A glitch, perhaps?

I can recall having trouble capitalizing a user's name when setting up various users or some clients, and I think it started around Mavericks time that using a capital for the username was discouraged or just not allowed or just unknown or too akward and invloved to attempt.

If and when it didn't work I just gave up and didn't bother with it anymore and it seemed the OS X was happy with things that way.

And I'm pretty sure I never went through the procedure that is outlined here:
macOS Sierra Home Folder Capitalization
macOS Sierra Home Folder Capitalization | MacRumors Forums

But maybe checkout the linked suggestion using Apple's support article of capitalizing the username, if it still works method at:
Change the name of your macOS user account and home folder
Change the name of your macOS user account and home folder - Apple Support

It seems that Catalina OS is really clamping down on any user modifications.
It's almost as if such Catalina OS X users are now the audience in the famous 1984 Apple ad!!!


- Patrick
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[MacInWin]

Patrick, I created a Catalina system on a USB stick and had zero problem with upper case letters in the account name. No 1984 here.