Apple chose this method as a way to enhance security, putting read-only system files on one volume and your changeable data, home directory, preference files, and all the rest on another.īut where does this leave you if you want to clone your startup volume and create a backup that can be used as a one-stop shop for restoring a failed drive or Mac, or which can be booted from? Fortunately, all the software you need is up to date. Until macOS 10.15 Catalina, Mac users knew: their startup volume was a single volume, just as it appeared! (Okay, for Fusion drive users, there are two physical drives managed by software to appear as a single “disk drive,” but that’s separate from the data organization that is a volume on a drive.)Īs I wrote a couple of months ago, Apple relies on a feature in APFS (Apple File System) called “volume group.” This allows macOS to link together two separate volumes to appear as a single drive.
