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need to change the name of the internal HD

Needed to replace the internal HD with an external SSD. Was required to call new boot drive Macintosh HD. Now Time Machine won't back up as I have two drives with the same name. Although I excluded the internal HD from the items to be backed up, Time Machine still refuses to start the backup. Do I need to keep the Macintosh HD name on external drive? If so, how do I change the name of the internal HD ?

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Jul 22, 2022 2:49 PM

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Posted on Jul 22, 2022 4:29 PM

Right click internal drive on desktop and pick "rename". Your external boot drive can be named anything you want. I make an external bootable clone (used CCC) of my internal drive and call it anything I want.

3 replies

Jul 25, 2022 12:33 PM in response to armtmurp

FYI, Changing the boot drive volume name is complicated with macOS 10.15+ because of macOS combining a system volume and Data volume behind the scenes. Unfortunately macOS isn't smart enough to change the name of both volumes in the Finder. I've even some versions of macOS not change both volume names even with Disk Utility. You just need to be sure the Data volume retains the " - Data" part of the name after renaming it. Worst case just make sure to change the "Macintosh HD" portion of both volume names so they match making sure " - Data" remains on the one volume.

need to change the name of the internal HD

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