I don't understand what Disk Utility is saying. (Repaired iMac 27")

[Clave]

My drive failed and the shop replaced it with an SSD.
It works okay most of the time, but keeps dropping into an 'extra slow' mode.
Disk Utility shows many, many levels on this drive:
Level 1: Apple SSD SM0128G Media
Sublevel: disk0s2
Level 2: CT1000BX500SSD1 Media
Sublevel: Container disk2
SubSublevel: My Mac and Com.apple.something?
Level 3: OS
Sublevel: - Data

I want to get a Mac Mini, but the thought of copying gibberish? to a new machine is fear-inducing to say the least!

Is this normal though? (The repair people were not an Apple store or anything like that)

 

[MacsBug]

It looks like you may have had an iMac with a Fusion Drive installed. A Fusion drive uses an SSD and a rotational drive to give you a boost in performance over just a standard rotational drive. When setup properly the SSD and rotational drive appear as one.

The 1st item is the built flash storage that was part of the Fusion Drive. You can actually format that and have a seperate 128GB partition.

As far as the other items that you are seeing.. 2nd item is the 1TB Crucial SSD that they installed. Since it is formatted as APFS, you see the Contaner that holds the partitions.

As of macOS 10.15 (Catalina) your main Hard drive is seperated into 2 Volumes, one for system Files, and one for Data.

Then with macOS 11 (Big Sir) they made the system partition read only.

Then with macOS 12 (Monterey) the system Volume is encrypted. This is why you see the com.apple.... partition. There are also several other partitions on the drive that are invisible in Disk utility

If you get a Mac mini, I would recommend that you backup the iMac to an external drive using an app like Carbon Copy Cloner You can tell CCC to do a Legacy backup and this will backup all of your files and keep all of the partitions transferred. You can then use that backup to migrate your data to the new mini.

I hope that this helps, and doesn’t confuse you more.

 

[Clave]

Thanks for this. I did not know those drives were a thing...
I am already running a couple of backups, but I'll change one of them to a Carbon Copy - for the switch over.
Thanks for the detailed explanation too - I haven't delved into any of this stuff since OS9, and it's become much complicated lol!

 

[MacsBug]

Glad that I could be of help. Come back if you have any other questions.

 

[Clave]

Well, it has been completely erased and ready to be given to a family member. (New Mac Mini bought)
It also seems quite reliable and fast now lol!