Hard Drive duplicated after Time Machine Restore

[TurboSteve]

Roger that, I know he wasn't and i did exactly what he said. The info he was looking for just isn't present.

 

[MacInWin]

BTW, the reason both show the same capacity is that both are in the same Container, and the size of the Container is the potential size of the Volume. Volumes are dynamically sized, based on need, up to the size of the Container. So if you have a 500GB drive with one container and put 10 Volumes in it, each would show a capacity of 500GB. That is how APFS works, and is different from HFS+.

 

[MacInWin]

Also, based on that last image, it looks like "Steve SSD" is the more likely candidate to be the "real" Mojave drive, with Steve SSD 1 being the Catalina boot drive. I get that from the "Used" information where Steve SSD is 400+GB and Steve SSD 1 is only 42 GB. That latter sounds like system files to me.

- - - Updated - - -

Also, the modified date on the two would support that the "1" is the Catalina as it was last used longer ago. (You see that just below the name of the drive.)

 

[TurboSteve]

That makes sense to me. I'm creating the bootable usb now. If i can get away with renaming the Catalina drive, then TM should work fine i would think. If it all goes to ****, at least i have the drive and the old TM backup to restore from and set things straight once and for all.

 

[MacInWin]

Well, based on what I see in post 21, I thought you had already renamed Steve SSD 1. Perhaps the system added the "1" to distinguish between the two? What does Finder show for drives? You should be able to rename the SSD 1 drive in the Get Info window if you click on the lock icon at the bottom of the window and provide an admin password.

 

[TurboSteve]

They both say Steve SSD in the finder window. As soon as i'm done with the usb, i'll try renaming it to Steve SSD 1.

 

[ferrarr]

You may not be able to rename the drive created within Catalina, while you are in Mojave? So you may want to rename the current Mojave drive.

 

[TurboSteve]

I was able to rename the other drive Steve SSD 1 and Time Machine is working on backing up the other drive currently.

I guess i'll have to see long term if renaming the other drive causes any issues.

 

[MacInWin]

You may not be able to rename the drive created within Catalina, while you are in Mojave? So you may want to rename the current Mojave drive.

Bob, from what I can tell with my USB Catalina system, if I mount the stick under Mojave I can see and modify both Volumes. Apparently whatever security Apple added to the system drive is not in place when booted in Mojave.

 

[ferrarr]

Bob, from what I can tell with my USB Catalina system, if I mount the stick under Mojave I can see and modify both Volumes. Apparently whatever security Apple added to the system drive is not in place when booted in Mojave.

Ok, thanks Jake.


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[TurboSteve]

Well, the TM backed up seemingly fine and I haven't come across any other issues with the current configuration, so i think i'm good for now. Thank you all for your insight and guidance!

 

[Slydude]

Are you sure one of those sets of icons weren't alias files (shortcuts to the original files)? Look at this article for examples of the little arrows that macOS uses to indicate alias files.

 

[Rod]

I think I agree with what Jake has said. You now have the volume structure of Catalina with the macOS of Mojave. Before you muck up the contents of your Time Machine backup I would strongly suggest you download the Mojave installer (if you don't still have it) from Purchases in the App Store, get a copy of DiskmakerX from here DiskMaker X and create a USB Stick bootable installer for Mojave. Once done boot from the USB installer erase your SSD and reinstall Mojave, you can restore your data from Time Machine as part of the process.

 

[jga40]

I never use Time Machine, it's a pretty useless piece of software, Why ? Because you cannot boot from Time Machine. I recommend using an external Hard Drive, preferably an SSD one. Reasonably priced on Ebay, then you need to a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner which creates a bootable copy as easy as clicking on "clone" Highly recommended by many Mac users. First Mac was an LC III, just 2 MB of RAM & 160 MB Hard Drive, running Mac OS 7.6. How things have changed Too many new OS, changed far too often in my opinion.
too often.

Jim
Mac user for 27 years

 

[MacInWin]

I never use Time Machine, it's a pretty useless piece of software, Why ? Because you cannot boot from Time Machine.

Hi, Jim. You can boot from a TM Backup, but only into recovery mode from where you can reinstall the OS and recover from the backup in TM. Maybe you ought to give it a try again sometime.

TM has a place. It's good for recovering a file that you just deleted, or edited, and want the old copy back from before the deletion/edit. And maybe you want the version TWO variations back. It is possible to do that with CCC through Safety Net, but it takes up a lot more drive space because of the differences between how the two products do backups.

I use both, for two reasons: 1. I have had an internal drive AND the backup drive fail simultaneously, so I now do three or more backups, and 2. The two kinds of backup have different uses. CCC is good to be able to keep going with an internal drive failure while waiting for the replacement drive and TM is great for the historical, hierarchical backup of changes.

 

[Slydude]

Why? Because you cannot boot from Time Machine. I recommend using an external Hard Drive, preferably an SSD one

Jim
Mac user for 27 years

That's not entirely accurate. When originally introduced you could not boot from a Time Machine backup, The last several incarnations of Time Machine support booting directly to the built-in recovery mode and restoring from a Time Machine backup.

Having said that I personally prefer a bootable clone because it can be used to get back to work in the time it takes to reboot from the clone. Not a difference if you are replacing a few files but time-consuming if you are reinstalling the OS.