Remove all time machine backups from a certain date and backward

Right, so here's what I want to do: I want to navigate back to a specific date -- for arguments sake let's say June -- and remove all time machine backups from that date and earlier. Is there an easy way to do so without going through every entry in time machine and "removing backup"?
I want to migrate my time machine backups to a new drive, but realize I don't really need EVERYTHING here since its for an older machine. So what I'd like to do is get my rather large 1.5 TB time machine backup down to a more manageable size and then migrate it to a new drive.

I don't recommend deleting Time Machine snapshots. If you have multiple backup volumes, which you should have, and you need to repurpose one of them, you should just erase it. But if you want to try it anyway, and if you're running OS X 10.8 or later (not any older version), see below.
Don't attempt this procedure unless you have at least one other complete backup of all the data. You should have another backup anyway — one is never enough to be safe.
Navigate in the Finder to your backup disk, and then to the folder named "Backups.backupdb" at the top level of the volume. If you back up over a network, you'll first have to mount the "sparsebundle" file containing your backups by double-clicking it. Descend into the folder until you see the snapshots, which are represented by folders with a name that begins with the date of the snapshot. Drag the ones you don't want to the Trash and empty. Sometimes, for unknown and unpredictable reasons, the Trash will fail to empty with a cryptic error message. I don't know of any way to recover from that condition except to erase the backup volume and start over.

Similar Messages

How Can I Delete all Time Machine Backup From Computer Hard Drive?

Can somebody help me on this. I don't want to use time machine anymore because i have low volume External hard Drive(500GB) only but want to do manual buckup.

Hi,
If you no longer want to use the Ext Drive with TM...
Turn TM Off and Erase the Ext Drive using Disc Utility...
Cheers,
If you need more detail... See this Older Discussion:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/7185763#7185763

Time machine backup from USB drive connected and backing up to Time Capsule

Hi all forum virgin here, so be gentle.
I'll get straight to it. Much net trawling hasn't resulted in a definitive answer on this which surely I'm not alone in
I have: MBP networked to TC (where TM resides) and USB drive connected.
A- I simply want to TM backup not only MBP but USB drive on network as well?
As far as I can see there is no way of selecting this and after TM back has finished the only way I can check is
to enter TM (fancy space screen view) and obviously idrive doesn't appear in finder view.
I have tried connecting to MBP and obviously TM backs it up too and I can see in Enter TM. But I need this
drive on network so a further 2 things here:-
B- when I remove from MBP and TM backs up again will it see it's not there and delete as a change?
C- will it keep in previous backups if I cycle back to that particular one?
Andy help here would be most welcome

Slymon2000 wrote:
B- when I remove from MBP and TM backs up again will it see it's not there and delete as a change?
Sooner or later, yes, as LaPastnague says. It depends on when the backups are done. The first backup of each day is kept for a month; all others are deleted after 24 hours. After a month, the first backup of the week is kept as long as there's room, and the others deleted.
Obviously not a reliable solution.
A better method might be to use a different app to back it up to the TC's internal HD, but that presents another problem. See #Q3 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule for an explanation and some possible workarounds.
The 3rd-party apps CarbonCopyCloner and ChronoSynch can do network backups (others probably can, too).
So you might be able to "reserve" some space on the TC's HD and use one of those apps. As LaPastnague says, though, that will be relatively slow.
If there isn't enough room on the TC's internal HD, you could get another USB drive and connect it to the TC also (via a powered USB hub) and back up to it. That will be even slower, though.

Is it possible to take 2 time machine backups from 2 seperate MacBooks and migrate each backup to an iMac under separates user names?

I was sucessful migrating the first macbook to the imac under the first user name but I havent been able to get the second migration to happen under a second user name on the imac. Is this possible? can you only use migration assistant once or should it work?

Yes, you can do that.
If the second set of backups has a user account with the exact same short name (home folder name) as an existing one, you must rename one of them, per the last sample in the pink Transferring Accounts box of Using Migration Assistant on Lion.

How can I remove all Time Machine data from an external HD, while retaining the other folders/files on the disk?

I recently replaced my old Macbook Pro with a new Macbook Pro Retina.
The original MBP had Time Machine set up on an external HD, and I also had some manually saved/backed up files (stuff that didn't need incremental backups; very old stuff) on the disk as well, in folders. This worked fine and well for the life of the original MBP.
When I set up the MBPr, I did not elect to transfer everything over from a Time Machine disk, as I wanted a Fresh Install; I chose to just re-download/install the apps I needed from the App Store. Much cleaner, more stable. I updated to Yosemite immediately so, it gave me more of a clean install.
The problem is, Time Machine now won't read any Time Machine backups from that disk. Migration assistant can pull data from it, but it's a bit wonky. It was easier to just manually copy over what I needed.
Now, I just want to "reset", and completely remove the old Time Machine data from the external hard drive, since it is completely useless to me now (I can't access it on this computer, and it's taking up space). I want to remove the Time Machine data, as if it were never there, but keep my other folders/files that are on the disk (so, a format is not feasible).
I will then set the disk up as a new, fresh Time Machine disk for the new MBPr.
What is the proper method for removing Time Machine data from an external disk (which doesn't seem to be associated with this machine anyway)? I know a simple rm -rf will cause problems.
Thanks for any help provided.

See the yellow box in #12 of Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

When I get to the select disk page it says that the HD is uesd as time machine drive. How can I remove time machine backup from my Mac.

I am tring to installe OS X Mavericks. When I get to the select disk page it says that the HD is uesd as time machine drive. How can I remove time machine backup from my Mac.

Open up your Finder and click on Go on the top menu bar. Select Computer and then double click Macintosh HD. In here delete the backup folder. Might be called backups.backupdb.

Moving Time Machine backups from Time Capsule to External USB Drive

Hi all,
hoping someone out there can help I'm trying to move my time machine backups from my old Time Capsule to my external USB drive. I've already used the Airport Utility to "archive" my Time Capsule to a USB connected WD MyBook Elite.
Right now my WD MyBook Elite has both the archive, and recent (roughly 5 backups) of both my MacBook & MacMini. I've tried to follow the seemingly simple steps located in the FAQ's here [URL="http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/18.html#id22"]Copy NETWORK backups to be used LOCALLY[/URL] , but I cannot past step 1.
[Quote]Right-click the new volume on your desktop or Finder sidebar and select Get Info. If the Ignore ownership on this volume box is checked, click the padlock at the lower right and enter your Admin password at the prompt. Then remove the check mark from the box and close the window.[/Quote]
There is no option to "Ignore Ownership" in Snow Leopard for the Spars Bundle or when expanding it to see its folders.
Any advice?
I'm basically trying to combine my backups to unit them into one seemless backup each for:
Mac Mini & MacBook.
Thank you in advance.

Dark Heart wrote:
[Quote]Right-click the new volume on your desktop or Finder sidebar and select Get Info. If the Ignore ownership on this volume box is checked, click the padlock at the lower right and enter your Admin password at the prompt. Then remove the check mark from the box and close the window.[/Quote]
There is no option to "Ignore Ownership" in Snow Leopard for the Spars Bundle or when expanding it to see its folders.
That's not referring to the sparse bundle you're copying FROM, but the new volume you just formatted on the USB drive you're copying TO.
If you didn't just format the partition, that box may not be shown -- it not, there's no problem and you don't need to do anything in that step.
I'm basically trying to combine my backups to unit them into one seemless backup each for:
Mac Mini & MacBook.
I'm not sure what you mean by that: you cannot combine the backups of two different Macs. You can put them both on the same hard drive, either in two different partitions, or, if any are going to be backed-up over a network, in a sparse bundle.
If I've misunderstood, please clarify exactly what you're trying to do.

I just restored my 13" MBP i5 at the apple store to the newest version of Lion after issues with a previous Time Machine backup from Snow Leopard- this time I created a new account and just ported files and folders, and now MS Office doesn't work. Help?

I just restored my 13" MBP i5 at the apple store to the newest version of Lion after issues with a previous Time Machine backup from Snow Leopard- this time I created a new account and just ported files and folders, and now MS Office doesn't work.
^^ that's the main problem. Here's the full history.
I bought a new 13" i5 MBP, early 2011 edition. I had an old white Macbook 2.14 ghz core2duo on Snow Leopard. I attempted to port over my time machine backup, but encountered problems in that my User was inaccessible from the new computer after the import finished, and I had to go in and change the root password, etc, and for some reason or another, I couldn't install any programs at all from that administrator's account. By "couldn't" I mean I could install them, but upon installation they would never boot. So, I took it to the apple store and did a clean install from the most up to date Lion OSX. Then, I created a brand new admin account, instead of trying to import the old one, and things seemed great. Then, I just imported my old files from the TM backup, but not any system settings, permissions, or user data. Just my Docs, pics, vids, apps, and itunes stuff.
Here's where things get weird again. I imported this stuff under the name "old", but all of these folders have a red negative sign on them, marking them as restricted. So, from my main admin account, I cannot even peruse these folders. Since I didn't import user data, I can't sign in to the "old" account to change permissions. I already tried to change the permissions from system preferences, but that didn't change anything. And now, for whatever reason, of all the apps that were imported then, MS Office is the only set of apps that does not work. When I click on it, it just says there was a problem and asks if I'd like to send a report to apple. I tried reinstalling it to no avail. I'm an English student, so i really need access to Word. Can anyone help? The Apple store is a major detour for me and would like to fix this issue myself.

Most likely you have Office 2004 which are PPC-only applications and will not work in Lion. Upgrade to Office 2011. Other alternatives are:
Apple's iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.)
Open Office (Office 2007-like suite compatible with OS X.)
NeoOffice (similar to Open Office.)
LibreOffice (a new direction for the Open Office suite.)

How can I "Put Back" a time machine backup from the trash to my external hard drive?

Basically what happened was I accidentally put an older time machine backup from my external hard drive into the trash on my macbook. Since then, time machine has made new backups onto my external hard drive. How can I either "Put Back" or replace the deleted backup back into my hard drive?
Whenever I try to move it it says "A newer item named “Backups.backupdb” already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the older one you’re moving?" I click replace and after a few minutes of loading, it says "Cannot replace. An item named "" already exists."

As long as you don't delete the trash, the files should be recoverable.
I suspect using the Put Back command could take a long time, so be patient.
If your Time Machine backups are mixed with your daughter's backups you might want to buy a larger drive and move the Time Machine files to the new drive.
Regarding missing photos in iPhoto...There might be options to rebuild/recover that data from iPhoto rather than trying to revert to a Time Machine backup.
Check out this third party app, iPhoto Library Manager. It has a demo.
http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/
Options for a larger drive.
I like the Seagate USB 3.0 Backup plus drives. Works on USB 2.0 ports. They come formatted for PC but easy to format in Disk Utility.
I don't recommend Western Digital because of the boot problem with some of their drives.
LaCie makes good drives.
All Mac formatted drives will cost more and it’s easy to reformat with Disk Utility. Do not use the software that comes with the drives. It’s recommended that you use Apple’s Disk Utility.
Prices vary but this gives you an idea of what you’ll find. As you notice the second and third TB is usually only $15 more per TB. Normally, you’ll find these prices but right now the 1T is more than the 2T
Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB USB 3.0 $85
Seagate Backup Plus 2 TB USB 3.0 $99
Seagate Backup Plus 3 TB USB 3.0 $115
I have seen the 3T on sale for $99.
Locally, Best Buy seems to have the best prices.

Time Machine backup FROM multiple drives?

I'm in the process of choosing a new MacPro, someone on these forums recommended Digilloyd's Mac Performance Guide as a good place to get help setting up a new mac for speed. The simplified version of what he advocates is replacing the stock internal drive with an SSD drive, on which you put the OS, apps & home folder. He then recommends creating a 0-raid stripe from 3 other drives to separate & hold your data, then using the forth internal bay drive (or another 0-raid stripe of the leftover, slower portions of various partitions of the drives) for Time Machine.
My question is, can Time Machine backup both drives (boot & data raid-0) or would I have to choose one of them?
+The more I read, the more confused I get+.

OK, I've scanned through the various articles. My thoughts are still essentially the same, and that is just how effective the entire system is when using multiple partitions from several drives to combine into multiple RAIDs. In reality this is not speed effective if the RAIDs need to be accessed concurrently. A read/write head can only be in one place at a time meaning that when one partition on the drive is being accessed, the OS cannot concurrently access another partition on the same drive.
Essentially this is how I understand the configuration at a simplistic level. Let's suppose we have two hard drives that we'll call Drive A and Drive B. Each drive is partitioned into two equally sized volumes that we'll refer to as follows:
....................... *Drive A* ......................... *Drive B* ......
Volume................. 1 ..................................... 3 ............
Volume................. 2 ..................................... 4 ............
Now, we will make two RAID arrays. RAID A uses Volume 1 and Volume 3, and RAID B uses Volume 2 and Volume 4.
Suppose you want to copy data from RAID A to RAID B. In order to do this the OS must first copy data from RAID A before it can write the data to RAID B. However, if RAID A was created using two separate drives (say, Drive A and Drive B,) and RAID B was created using two separate drives (say, Drive C and Drive D,) then the OS can copy from RAID A while concurrently writing to RAID B. This is physically possible because two read/write heads are involved instead of one. Theoretically the second construct is going to be much faster than the first construct.
My second observation is with regard to the reliance on external storage. A 2nd or 3rd generation Mac Pro's SATA bus is capable of a data interface rate of 3.0 Gb/sec. Firewire 800 is capable of 800 Mb/sec. The MP's internal SATA bus can support data transfer rates nearly four times that of Firewire. A modern hard drive is capable of saturating the Firewire bus, but not the internal SATA bus. The higher interface rate of the SATA bus means it's much better suited for truly fast RAID arrays. This is not the case for the Firewire bus.
External Firewire arrays are better suited for storage that does not require frequent or fast access.
Now with all this said it makes more sense to fully understand what your overall storage needs are then consider suitable designs. One need not rely on complicated RAID arrays if they aren't required. The focus should be on data access, data storage, and backup needs.
Although it's nice being able to brag at the cocktail party about having a fast SSD for your boot drive, let's consider how often you even need to boot the computer. I put my computers to sleep when they aren't in use. I never boot the computer unless a software update requires it or the computer has crashed completely. I haven't had the latter occur very often - mainly when I'm experimenting. Literally days, weeks, or months may go by before I reboot the computer. So a fast SSD boot drive would be for me a hugh waste of money.
My 1st generation Mac Pro is set up for my needs. It has four 500 GB fast Hitachi enterprise level hard drives. I use enterprise level drives that cost more because the computer is always on, so I want drives that will be reliably working. I used to have four Maxtor 300 GB drives that lasted for four years before I replace them with the Hitachis. My setup has one drive partitioned into a startup volume and a Boot Camp volume. One drive is my 'scratch' drive used for different OS system versions and/or seed testing. Two drives are configured as a mirrored RAID and used as the primary backup for the boot volume. The boot volume is 450 GBs and the Windows volume is 50 GBs. There's no backup for the Windows volume at the present time. Backups are usually done in the late afternoon using a backup utility. Presently that utility is Synk Standard, but I've also used Synchronize! Pro X and Carbon Copy Cloner. Backups are done on a fixed schedule in the background so they are virtually transparent to me. I use a mirrored RAID for backup to provide redundancy. If one backup drive fails hopefully the other will still be usable to protect the backup. I also have one external Firewire drive that contains a clone of the startup volume. The clone is updated monthly by incremental backup. It's for security in the worst case scenario that both drives in the mirrored RAID were to fail simultaneously.
Now, my need for frequent and fast access to data such as might be needed for streaming music or video is non-existent, so my configuration is one that is well-suited to my needs. You'll note that it's both simple and practical while providing data backup that's doubly secure.

Cannot transfer Time Machine backups from one external drive to another

Since I bought my 13 inch MacBook Pro in September 2014 I've been keeping Time Machine backups on an external 1TB Lacie Rugged. This is partitioned into three and one of the partitions contains my iPhoto library.
Last weekend I left my MBP disconnected from the power source but with the external hard drive still plugged in. Long story short - the battery level fell below the minimum needed to operate so it turned itself off and 'disconnected' the external hard drive. This resulted in a corrupted iPhoto library which is no longer accessible.
In order to restore my iPhoto Library from another backup I needed to buy a second external hard drive. Yesterday I bought a 2TB Lacie Rugged which I've now partitioned into 5.
I want to move my Time Machine backups from the 1TB Lacie Rugged to a partition on the 2TB Lacie Rugged (to take advantage of the new Lacie's Thunderbolt connection).
I read the Apple article -
HT202380: Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive
and followed the instructions precisely. About 2 hours into the transfer I came back to my MacBook Pro and saw a message saying that it was not possible to complete the transfer because I did not have the correct permissions. The only option was to click the OK button which stopped the transfer.
Can anyone advise what I should do next?
Cheers
Tricia

Hi Eric,
Thank you for your response. I came across another thread yesterday which suggested the Restore via Disk Utility method. It worked for me, too. This was after I had tried following the method suggested in the Apple article above three times but each time the message was the same ....
The operation can't be completed because you don't have permission to access some of the items.
I dare say that Apple would like to have us believe that it's a simple matter of 'drag and drop' but it certainly wasn't for me. From what I've read the permission problem crops up fairly frequently. Before the second and third attempts I had already amended Permissions on the Time Machine backups so that everyone could read and write, so that mustn't have been the problem. I'm the only person who uses my computer so that's not a problem.
The next problem I have is that I decided I would use the Restore route to transfer my SuperDuper clone rather than start from scratch. Unfortunately, the partition size on my original backup disk where SuperDuper clone is is 350GB and the size of the SuperDuper clone partition on my new backup is 300GB.
Of course, Apple says you can resize partitions using Disk Utility. What they don't say is you can downsize partitions but (in my experience and that of many other frustrated users on various forums) you CANNOT upsize using Disk Utility. I have 100GB spare on my external hard drive (from downsizing two partitions by 50GB each) BUT there is no way Disk Utility will let me increase the size of SuperDuper partition to 350GB :-(((
Cheers
Tricia

Deleted Time Machine Backups from Finder

I back up my MacBook with Time Machine. My girlfriend has an older MacBook Pro, with Tiger. I was surprised to see that Tiger did not come with any sort of backup utility, and I eventually found Super Duper. I made a backup with Super Duper to my external hard drive with my Time Machine backups. Her computer died, and she took it to Apple. They could not restore her data, which wasn't a big problem because I had made a very recent back up.
I then proceeded to restore the backup. I thought SD kept track of what files belonged to what computer, like TM does. It started copying my TM backups to her hard drive. This wouldn't be a problem, except she only has a 160 GB hard drive, and her backup is about 100 GB and my TM backup was another 100 GB. Thus the file restore would fail. I decided to delete the TM folder, because I was not worried about my computer, and I could create another backup after partition to avoid this disaster again.
I deleted the TM backups... and my drive still had 200 GB of used space. Then I used Google to find out how I royally messed this up. That being said and done, I have had Disk Utility repairing my external hard drive since Thursday at 5p, and it's now 8:40a on Saturday. Furthermore, while I deleted the files, SD still enumerates them and somehow copies them which fills the hard drive before the restore is complete. When I plugged my external hard drive into my MacBook, it automatically started a new TM back up. However, it renamed the folder "Andrew Fawcett's something (2)", as if it were a duplicate folder. So OS 10.5.8 knows somehow that there are files, and so does SD, but I cannot see them.
Apple's support told me to delete the TM backups in Finder... and to fix the invibile files to reformat the drive. How do I fix my TM backups so I can get SD to work? I have files I need to restore! From what I've read, there are a few of you familiar with SD.

afawcett wrote:
I back up my MacBook with Time Machine. My girlfriend has an older MacBook Pro, with Tiger. I was surprised to see that Tiger did not come with any sort of backup utility, and I eventually found Super Duper. I made a backup with Super Duper to my external hard drive with my Time Machine backups. [snip]
I then proceeded to restore the backup. I thought SD kept track of what files belonged to what computer, like TM does. It started copying my TM backups to her hard drive. This wouldn't be a problem, except she only has a 160 GB hard drive, and her backup is about 100 GB and my TM backup was another 100 GB. Thus the file restore would fail. I decided to delete the TM folder, because I was not worried about my computer, and I could create another backup after partition to avoid this disaster again.
I deleted the TM backups... and my drive still had 200 GB of used space. Then I used Google to find out how I royally messed this up. That being said and done, I have had Disk Utility repairing my external hard drive since Thursday at 5p, and it's now 8:40a on Saturday. Furthermore, while I deleted the files, SD still enumerates them and somehow copies them which fills the hard drive before the restore is complete. When I plugged my external hard drive into my MacBook, it automatically started a new TM back up. However, it renamed the folder "Andrew Fawcett's something (2)", as if it were a duplicate folder. So OS 10.5.8 knows somehow that there are files, and so does SD, but I cannot see them.
Apple's support told me to delete the TM backups in Finder... and to fix the invibile files to reformat the drive. How do I fix my TM backups so I can get SD to work? I have files I need to restore! From what I've read, there are a few of you familiar with SD.
SuperDuper! copies entire volumes. That's why it tried to transfer those Time Machine files. If you register SuperDuper! (USD28), you can tell it to exclude certain files, such as those TM files.
If you want to use an external drive for both TM and other storage, you might be happier if you partitioned that drive, using one partition for TM and the other for any other files.
Until you have this resolved, I'd turn off TM on both computers.

Transferring Time Machine backup from old to new Time Capsule

After transferring my old Time Machine backup from a 5 year old Time Capsule to a new Airport Time Capsule, my MacBook Air wants to start a new full Time Machine backup to the new TC. I was under the impression that the Time Machine backups would pick up where they left off. Was I mistaken? Is the backup supposed to begin anew even if you've transferred an old backup?
Also, if it must begin from scratch, how would I access the old TM backups if I needed to restore a file from the old backup?
Thanks for any help you can provide.

pmpknetr21 wrote:
After transferring my old Time Machine backup from a 5 year old Time Capsule to a new Airport Time Capsule, my MacBook Air wants to start a new full Time Machine backup to the new TC.
How far did you go? By that I mean did you allow the MBA to actually start the backup.
It can be very simple thing.. I have done it lots of times in my repairs to Time Capsules.. if I move a sparsebundle to another location, TM will not even check for the old sparsebundle until it start running.
So the operation is as follows..
Move the sparsebundle.
There is an Apple document as well as what Pondini produced.
Transfer TM backups..
Apple doco. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5097
Pondini doco http://pondini.org/TM/18.html
As long as you are talking network backups it doesn't much matter. The same rules apply to moving the sparsebundle.
When you reset TM to the new location of the backup.. it will always tell you it will begin a new backup..
As long as you did not change the computer name.. or install a new OS or upgrade.. only when the backup actually starts will it look for existing sparsebundles.. find it.. and begin from where it left off.
So you simply have to start. Wait for TM to figure out there is an existing sparsebundle with the correct name.. and start what will often be a deep scan of the existing sparsebundle. So it can take a long time.. and we do still recommend doing this first one by ethernet.. albeit on an Air that does mean buying the thunderbolt to ethernet dongle.
As a general principle I generally recommend people do start a new backup. Archive the old one.. it is easy to access old backups.. Again see pondini FAQ.. 14-17 on all the neato things you can do.

Can I recover time machine backups from the trash? They are not deleted.

I deleted by mistake time machine backups from an external hard disk and I do not know how to recover htem. The bin has not been emptied. I learnt it would be possible via "Terminal" but I do not know how. Some help would be very much appreciated! Thanks in advance.

That's not possible, the message is: backups cannot be moved (I'm workin in German). After having googled I read somewhere that it would be possible to recover the backups with the software Terminal. I copied the path of that article and adapted it - however nothing happened. So I certainly did something wrong - but what???? Do you have any idea about this? I'm a bit desperate.

Downgrading from Mavericks to Mountain Lion WITHOUT time machine backup from Mountain Lion.

Hello. I'm one of the unlucky owners of Macbook Retina 15" Mid 2012. I was very satisfied with this computer, everything was great, untill I installed OS X Mavericks. My computer started to have GPU Panics all the time under some "heavier" usage like watching long videos on YouTube. I googled this problem and then I saw that I wasn't the only one, many people had problems after upgrading to Mavericks. I also read that downgrading to Mountain Lion solves the problem, but after the Internet Recovery update, when you are restoring your mac, it restores as Mavericks. I read Apple instruction how to revert os x, but it requires Time Machine backup from Mountain Lion, I already downloaded ML Installer from AppStore but I don't know how to install it.
Greetings,
Mdkn

If you have a Mountain Lion installer application then you can downgrade, but you will have to erase the drive. You should try backing up your Home folder in advance so you could at least restore your data. You will need to reinstall any third-party applications.
Make Your Own Mavericks, Mountain/Lion Installer
After downloading the installer you must first save the Install Mac OS X application. After the installer downloads DO NOT click on the Install button. Go to your Applications folder and make a copy of the installer. Move the copy into your Downloads folder. Now you can click on the Install button. You must do this because the installer deletes itself automatically when it finishes installing.
   2. Get a USB flash drive that is at least 8 GBs. Prep this flash drive as follows:
Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
After DU loads select your flash drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the leftside list. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list.
Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to an hour depending upon the flash drive size.
            3. Use DiskMaker X to put your installer clone onto the USB flash drive.
Wait for the process to complete which will take quite some time.
Use your new installer flash drive to boot the computer. Boot by doing:
Boot Using OPTION key:
1. Restart the computer.
2. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the
      "OPTION" key.
3. Release the key when the boot manager appears.
4. Select the disk icon for the USB flash drive.
5. Click on the arrow button below the icon.
Partition and Format the hard drive:
Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
After DU loads select your newly installed hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion. Mavericks: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion, Mavericks and click on the Install button. Be sure to select the correct drive to use if you have more than one.
You will need an active Internet connection.

Remove all time machine backups from a certain date and backward

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