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I had two macOS (Catalina and Big Sur), Catalina was on Container disk1 and Big Sur was on Container disk2 recently I erased Catalina (Container disk1), so the question is, how to merge disk 2 with disk 1 without loosing my data ?

enter image description here

as you can see minus sign is disable in disk 1 !
thanks in advance !

out put of diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk1⁩         81.1 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk3⁩         40.0 GB    disk0s4

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +81.1 GB    disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2


/dev/disk3 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +40.0 GB    disk3
                                 Physical Store disk0s4
   1:                APFS Volume ⁨MK-BigSur - Data⁩        19.0 GB    disk3s1
   2:                APFS Volume ⁨Preboot⁩                 282.7 MB   disk3s2
   3:                APFS Volume ⁨Recovery⁩                622.9 MB   disk3s3
   4:                APFS Volume ⁨VM⁩                      1.1 MB     disk3s4
   5:                APFS Volume ⁨MK-BigSur⁩               15.1 GB    disk3s5
   6:              APFS Snapshot ⁨com.apple.bless.B46E...⁩ 15.1 GB    disk3s5s1
Freeman
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    Back up the data to a separate drive then start from scratch on that drive. There are so many examples on here of people trying to combine partitions where it fails and the only successful outcome is loss of data. – Solar Mike Jul 18 '21 at 16:24
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    If the data were important, the OP would already be backing it up. He should erase the drive and begin again. – Marc Wilson Jul 18 '21 at 18:32
  • Can you add to your question the results of terminal commande : diskutil list? –  Jul 19 '21 at 04:24

2 Answers2

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[This is from experiencing, maybe someone knows better and can explain with more technical details why it is that way.]

I have found that merging partitions only works if you merge a "lower level" partition into an "upper" one. In the pie chart this means the one starting at 12 o'clock (clockwise) is the most upper one. Every partition following clockwise is the next highest, i.e. the one closest approaching 12 o'clock clockwise will be the lowest. You can merge that one to the upper one, but not the other way round.

In your specific case this means, you would maybe be able to merge "MK-BigSur" to "Container disk1", but not the other way round. Merging actually means one partition is being enlarged after the other has beed deleted.

As it has been pointed out, messing around with partitions (especially if you are unexperienced) may quickly lead to data loss. Always make sure to have a backup of your important data!

X_841
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Here I assume the output from diskutil list will show the container disk1 occurs before the container with the MK-BigSur volume. In other words, disk0s2 partition has container disk1 and the disk0s3 partition has container disk2. The disk2 container has the MK-BigSur volume.

You question is similar to this question. However, to use the accepted answer, you would first have to remove the container disk1. The commands are given below. Here I assume the command is entered using Big Sur.

diskutil apfs deletecontainer disk1

Afterwards, restart the Mac before using the accepted answer.

David Anderson
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