You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

racheldb007 Author

Level 1

6 points

Duplicated User Files in System (Macintosh HD - Data?) - Catalina

My mac is on low storage space for a long time (before Catalina). I turn off Time Machine for a while and there was no local screenshots left. As the first screenshot from OmniDiskSweeper shows, my 152.9G of user files are 'duplicated' into System Catalogue? The system and users are just two paths shown in the last two screenshots, the 152.9G of files are completely the same. If I delete either of them, another get deleted as well.

In Catalina, what I understand is users files will be in Macintosh HD - Data, and system files will be in Macintosh HD, but right now my users files are also in Macintosh HD - Data which cause storage problems. Any suggestions?

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.15

Posted on Dec 20, 2019 11:27 PM

Top-ranking reply

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,776 points

Posted on Dec 21, 2019 8:06 AM

They are not duplicated. It is file system tricks that makes you and OmniDiskSweeper think so.

Catalina has two Volumes it uses and the Finder makes them appear as one.

The Macintosh HD contains the system files and is mounted read only.

The Macintosh HD - Data Volume contains your data.

Move or delete files from your users home folders to make space available.

If you have Time Machine turned on, it may be making local snapshots that take up space. Connecting to your Backup drive and letting it complete a backup should clear those up, but the Finder should delete them as it needs space for other things.

View in context

Duplicated User Files in System (Macintosh HD - Data?) - Catalina

Similar questions