The Finder, Disk Utility and Terminal show disks and volumes differently, according to their function. This can appear confusing in Catalina until it has been explained.
diskutil
With only sketchy documentation and no open source release, how complete are the tools to support APFS? Are they still “work in progress”?
It may be over 2 years old, but its supporting tools are more like those of a beta. Adding containers isn’t at all straightforward.
What’s the minimum size of a container, or a volume, in APFS? The answer can range from 1.05 MB up to 167.8 MB, it appears.
Why measuring free and used disk space is not so simple in APFS, and which estimates you should trust.
Disk Utility claims to perform secure erase on SSDs, but does no such thing. Here are workarounds to do what it doesn’t, and details of a bug preventing encryption of APFS volumes.
Can you trust Disk Utility to securely erase hard drives and SSDs? How to prepare your Mac’s internal storage before selling it, so you don’t give your bank details away with it. And much more.
How does the volume structure differ between Fusion Drives in HFS+ and APFS formats? Does Disk Utility show an accurate picture?
Why might we want to repair permissions, and how does it differ now from what is used to be? As shown in a clear diagram.
I’ve got two volumes showing in the Finder. So how come diskutil list tells me I’ve got four disks with a total of 12 partitions?
