Since using Migration Assistant to get my new MacBook Pro (15" 2019) running based on my older 15" 2016 because of a hardware problem, I have 8 Macintosh HD icons representing my 2 TB SSD internal hard disc on my desktop each time I restart the computer. (Both computers are running MacOS 10.15 latest beta) Three of the icons on the desktop are labeled Macintosh HD and five are labeled Macintosh HD - Data. 7 of the 8 have an "eject" option when I right click on the icon and the wastebasket changes to an eject icon if a drag a disc there (other than the one "real" disc). If I eject all the "ejectables" things work fine (they work fine if I don't eject them, except my Time Machine won't back up when they're on the desktop because it says there are multiple hard disks with the same name.
If I go into Disk Utility, there is a "Container disk1" that shows 9 Macintosh HDs (3 called Macintosh HD and six called Macintosh HD - Data). If I click on Container disk1 itself, it says there are 12 volumes in it, the 8 mentioned plus an additional Macintosh - Data, plus 2 labeled "Not Mounted" and a final one labeled VM.
Interestingly, on the desktop, each has a different amount of free space listed but differing only by small amounts (for example one says 2 TB, 636.31 GB free, another 2 TB 636.36 GB free, etc. The non-ejectable "real disk" shows 2 TB, 753.16 GB free. Within Disk Utility all but two of the 9 disks showing have less than a GB used except for one that has 1.35 TB used (it's one labeled with - Data suffix) and one that has 10.31 GB used. In Disk Utility, clearly all the extra disks are volumes within the SSD. Several have no data, but a number of them have some data, so I'm hesitant to delete the extra volumes. I can't find any files that are inaccessible after I eject all the efectables -- but that's just by running as many apps as I can.
As you can tell, I'm at a total loss as to what these represent, how to consolidate them all into one drive/volume or get rid of the ones that shouldn't be there, etc. I can say that I had to run in Rocovery mode several times to get the transfer of data to complete and each time I did, I was presented with an ever increasing number Macintosh HD drives to select from.
Please help -- if anyone has any suggestions, I'd really appreciate it!
Sandy
So. . . I made a full backup of my system, went into Disk Utility, and deleted all the errant volumes from the container (7 in all). I checked after each deletion that the system was running well and that a reboot went smoothly. After a couple went well, I deleted the rest in one fell swoop (except for the Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD -Data volumes that had substantial content in them).
All seems well, rebooting goes even smoother than usual and, after reboot, I have a single icon for Macintosh HD. All is well with the world.
Sandy