How to hide/remove Preboot partition

[Questor74]

Although I'm aware of a 2018 discussion thread on this topic with various solutions, it's so technical! And I'm not sure if it applies to my situation, which is...

A preboot partition has been accidentally revealed on the desktop via Disk Utility on a backup Monterey drive I wasn’t using (I was trying to erase another volume but this one got "touched" by Disk Utility and showed up, unwanted!) but now I’ve upgraded that drive to Ventura and and it appears to be operating normally…however the preboot partition is still there…I'm hesitating on cloning this drive to another drive while the Preboot partition is still visible? How can I keep it away?

Can anyone suggest a Terminal script or a Disk Utility trick (I can unmount it, but it would just come back in the next reboot?) so that I can remove it or rather hide it from the desktop? Thanks in advance!

 

[joevt]

Are you sure it's a preboot volume?

diskutil list
diskutil apfs list
mount

 

[Questor74]

Are you sure it's a preboot volume?

diskutil list
diskutil apfs list
mount

Well, yes, it's currently unmounted but I am pretty sure it will show up again if I reboot?

 

[joevt]

Disk Utility.app normally doesn't show Preboot volumes even if they are mounted.

Provide the asked for information or use https://gist.github.com/joevt/a99e3af71343d8242e0078ab4af39b6c

 

[Questor74]

here's the terminal readout?

 

[Questor74]

the terminal readout...

 

[joevt]

That APFS container has 2 Preboot volumes. Disk disk10s8 has the Preboot role so it is probably the real Preboot volume.

Mount disk10s3. What files and folders are on that disk?

Compare that with what's on disk10s8 which is mounted at /System/Volumes/Preboot

If disk10s3 is not important, then it should be removed.

Please post terminal output as .txt files. You may need to compress them as .zip in order to attach them to forum posts.

 

[Questor74]

I mounted the partition/volume and it appears to be... empty? I realized that I've never actually looked inside before? it just suddenly appeared in Disk Utilities when I was trying to work with another volume at the time. As since I'm currently using that volume I hope it will be safe to remove/delete?

 

[joevt]

If there's nothing on that volume, then it should be safe to remove/delete it. Or you can keep it and just give it a more appropriate name. All volumes in an APFS container share the same space so having extra volumes doesn't take away from the other volumes in the same APFS container.

 

[Questor74]

Using Disk Utilities, I was able to delete this unwanted blank partition and then I rebooted and all appears well? Thank you so much! This is so technical I have to be careful how to proceed. Brand new to MacOS Ventura too! I had no knowledge of what is a Preboot prior to this! Thanks!