Update Mojave to Big Sur

[Tracy]

another question what is this Macintosh HD-Data
that showed up?
I ejected it, it was causing an issue with time machine

[Joe]

Might be the recovery petition. But is weird you are seeing it mounted on your desktop. I've never seen it show up there. How big is it? (megabytes)

[Tracy]

1 TB
It pops up every morning
I ejected it again, time machine won't back up with this on the desktop it thinks there are 2 Macintosh HDs

[Joe]

Yeah that is known issue with restoring from Time Machine but not all of the time. On my system all of my data is actually on Macintosh HD - Data but the only drive on my Desktop shows it as Macintosh HD so mine is working the way it should. Read this thread and see if it matches what you are seeing:

Two Volumes Named "Macintosh HD - Data" Now Appear in Disk Utility in Addition to "Macintosh HD"

Should you decide to do what it says in that post just make sure you are deleting the correct one. Or else you will be starting over.

[Tracy]

it concerns me that it has 1TB when Macintosh HD should have 2TB?

thanks for that link I will try and fix when I can understand what I'm doing better.
most people don't have any space on the HD-data, that concerns me

It's not causing a huge problem yet, I just have to unmount so time machine can backup

[Joe]

My Macintosh HD shows -- used and zero KB available while my Macintosh HD - Data shows 204.81 GB used and 741.25 GB available so it is mounting Macintosh HD - Data but it shows up as Macintosh HD. Weird.

[Tracy]

Huh mine too

[Joe]

In your second screen shot it shows you have two Macintosh HD - Data volumes. That is the problem. You need to delete one. Click each one and give me a screen shot of each.

[Tracy]

Thanks!
now that you said that I see that one was for the old OS?
I do not know how to delete

[Joe]

OK..unfortunately it appears that at some point the system partitioned your 2 TB hard drive into two separate 1 TB partitions because it looks like both of your Macintosh HD - Data partitions are both 1 TB and both contain data. 

How do you feel about doing a fresh install again?

The fix would be to boot from USB installer again and partition your internal hard drive as a single 2 TB partition and name it Macintosh HD and do another fresh install to it and the installer will create any other partitions it may need. Then bring back your data via the Time Machine Backup again. I'm pretty sure that would fix your problem.

Just don't shoot the messenger. 

[Tracy]

I figured that may be the case
yes I am open to it as long as you hold my hand!

maybe next week or end of week I will let you know
Thanks so much!!!

[Joe]

Not going anywhere anytime soon. Blizzard with sleet and ice moving into the area tonight. Just hope I don't lose power.

[Skryber]

Not going anywhere anytime soon. Blizzard with sleet and ice moving into the area tonight. Just hope I don't lose power.

Same. Kids called off school and we may get 1 or 2 snow days.

[Joe]

Same. Kids called off school and we may get 1 or 2 snow days.

I think you have already had quite a bit of snow. This will be our first BIG one this year. Had a few smaller ones. Nothing like they are predicting for this one.

[Skryber]

Same. Kids called off school and we may get 1 or 2 snow days.

I think you have already had quite a bit of snow. This will be our first BIG one this year. Had a few smaller ones. Nothing like they are predicting for this one.

Yes we've had snow for a long time already. And you just have to assume everywhere you step outside is a sheet of ice. We are in the stupid snow belt and Sunday it looked like 3 different systems coming this way. It's raining now which will turn to snow tonight and supposed to continue to Thursday. Someone said 31".