Something labeled “Container disk2” has suddenly appeared on my iMac’s Internal SSD Drive. What is it, and can I make it go away?
Here’s a screenshot from Disk Utility:
Everything is working just fine. If I click on [krocnyc’s] iMac in Finder, a hard drive icon named “lil” now appears where “Macintosh HD” used to be. Clicking on that takes me to my Applications, Library, System, and Users folders, which are all as they should be.
Does the name “lil” mean anything to you? Looks like something added a new volume to your APFS disk drive and is now sharing a container with your internal data volume. I can’t imagine how that would have happened by itself without some action on your part…
“lil” means nothing to me. I didn’t do anything intentional, but of course that doesn’t rule out my having done something inadvertently …
Did you run any new backup software (Time Machine, etc) that ended up in the wrong place? How about restoring from backup? Any recent software installation that was the least bit iffy?
Try this article to view the snapshot and see if anything about it triggers a memory for you.
Many thanks, @karlnyhus! As I said, everything is working just fine, so I think that all that’s happened is that “Macintosh HD” somehow got renamed “lil,” although I can’t for the life of me figure out how.
This might be pertinent?
It suggests there’s a possible Mojave issue connected to new the APFS conversion process.
The Apple Support article linked above references:
In Finder you can right-click on lil and rename it back to Macintosh HD.
As for Disk Utility showing the containers, click the little View thing next to where it says Disk Utility, and change it to Show Only Volumes.
Thanks, @Medievalist and @JohnAtl.
I suspect that my problem’s origin just some fat-finger inadvertency by which my internal hard drive got renamed “lil.” Anyway, I changed “lil” back to Macintosh HD in disk utility, rebooted, and everything seems OK. (Yes, I was tempted to change the name to either “Magill” or “Nancy” …) I’m now on “Container disk5”; why the system blew right by Container disks 3 and 4 is a rabbit hole I just don’t have the energy for right now.
