Deleting back ups

I tried to delete a back-up and it sent it to the trash, it is only available when the time machine volume is visible/available but am unable to empty the trash, it keeps giving me error code -8003, i've tried to force an empty trash with Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner but it is not responding well, it takes hours to open and then repeatedly ask for administrator password which i input but nothing happens, how can i get rid of the file, erase it, delete? what did i do wrong? i tried to place the file back but it says it is not possible to replace backups. Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Choggbabaprecious wrote:
thanks very much for your immensely helpful advice, but to be honest i don't really have much of importance in time machine back up, i do also regularly back up all important files to the capsule and wouldn't mind too much erasing time machine and all it's back ups and information, bday coming soon and will apply for a separate data disk where i can place time machine, so how can i erase time machine and all it's related info from the capsule safely? as i've said i do have other files in the machine and do not want to loose them, at the moment i do not have anywhere else i can back up all that stuff onto, my laptop is only 250G and is not capable of holding all my music and video files, they are over 500G, iTunes runs from the capsule. Is there any safe way i can just delete all time machine related stuff? I'm planning on placing it on the external drive i'm hoping to get soon. Cheers again
That's very confusing and hard to follow -- sentences and paragraphs often help.
I think you're saying you have originals of some data on your Time Capsule, in addition to your Time Machine backups. If so, that's not a good idea, for three reasons. See #Q3 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Capsule+ forum), for details and some possible workarounds.
Your best bet, if possible, would be a larger internal HD (1 GB or larger), so you can keep all the originals there, and use the Time Capsule for backups only.
Next best would be, as you say, an external HD. But don't use it for backups, since you cannot back up the contents of the Time Capsule with Time Machine.
Do it the other way; put all the other originals (ie, your music and video) on the external HD, and back up your internal HD and the external to the Time Capsule.
If you need additional space on the Time Capsule until you can get the external HD, you can delete some old backups via Time Machine. See #12 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

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I manually deleted back-ups from Time Machine and now I can't empty the trash

I manually deleted back-ups from Time Machine and now I can't empty the trash.

Using Finder (deleting Time Machine backups) to manage Time Machine files is a mistake. The remedy is somewhat easy, but you will lose all the files on that TM drive.
If there is nothing elese on the Time Machine drive, try reformatting the drive with Disk Utility. This will effectively remove the files from that drive from the trash. If you have files on this drive, temporarily copy the files to another drive, then reformat the TM drive.

External Hard Drive Full, how do I delete back ups from years ago?

I have a LaCie 500GB external hard drive. I bought it to store my iTunes library on it, then when Time Machine came out a few years ago, I began backing up using Time Machine onto the same drive. Now the drive is about full, but it is mostly full from backups. How do I delete older back ups that are from almost 3 years ago? I can seem to go in there and do anything. I need more room for my iTunes library.
I also recently bough a portable G-Drive 500 GB hard drive for my photos. So I was thinking I'll just change my Time Machine backup to that. Or just transfer my iTunes to that one so I can carry it on the road. But that'll take awhile I know, and the connection is not as fast, as its only USB whereas my LaCie is an F-400 connection.
Thanks

saxman66 wrote:
I have a LaCie 500GB external hard drive. I bought it to store my iTunes library on it, then when Time Machine came out a few years ago, I began backing up using Time Machine onto the same drive. Now the drive is about full, but it is mostly full from backups. How do I delete older back ups that are from almost 3 years ago? I can seem to go in there and do anything. I need more room for my iTunes library.
I take it everything is in the same partition? If so, that's (obviously) a problem. Ordinarily, you'd just let Time Machine handle it -- it will delete the oldest backup(s) when it needs room for new ones.
You can do this manually, though. See #12 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
I also recently bough a portable G-Drive 500 GB hard drive for my photos. So I was thinking I'll just change my Time Machine backup to that. Or just transfer my iTunes to that one so I can carry it on the road. But that'll take awhile I know, and the connection is not as fast, as its only USB whereas my LaCie is an F-400 connection.
That would be an excellent idea. In addition to not having to manually delete old backups, you can let Time Machine back up the other disk, as well as your internal HD. Be sure to format it +Mac OS Extended (Journalled).+

Retrieve Time Machine old deleted back-ups

Hi,
My disk was running out of space as time machine was backing up but it also 'deleted old back ups' Is there any way to retrive these ?
Thanks
Ken

I've got to say figuring out what hardware to purchase for original archiving AND Time Machine backups—for that and one laptop have been a nightmare. First we went the NAS Synology route as recommended by an Apple Store employee. Then last week found out that this would corrupt our huge 150 gigs iPhoto library (if not now at some point). So, have been reading boards, calling apple and spent another two hours in the Apple store today. Two hours (with my family)! Far too many hours wasted on what should be a simple user experience to explain/help users with.
Unfortunately this is what I learned...
Every Apple employee has a different take. I've spoken in person with four Apple Store employees on two different occassions, read the board "experts" here and phoned Apple but get different insight/answers each and every time.
We were prepared to walk out with a Time Capsule (for Time Machine) and one HD for our need—but two employees today said we didn't need a Time Capsule. Instead they both suggested two HDs (with one acting as a dedicated Time Machine) because we had an Airport Extreme. And we could do wifi backups no problem—and the HD would be accessible via wifi (when plugged into the Airport Extreme). So, we walked out with the a 2T and 3T Seagate HDs—and have spent hours on reorganizing yet again.
And now I am reading that not only does Mountain Lion not support this usage—and I must manually plug in both HDs (the Time Machine and original archive) for backups on a laptop. Or rather to ensure Time Machine backups (that contain the external HD content) are not deleted.
THIS RATHER MANUAL SCENARIO DEFEATS THE PURPOSE OF A LAPTOP (free of teathering and wires—it's stored on a coffee table not desk). I don't get it?!? So-so annoyed.
There should be a way to "lock" the external HD data so this doesn't happen.

HT1766 deleting back ups from itunes

Hi, i have multiple devices, mine, my partners and our kids. i would like to know how to delete each individual back up and start again as my partner has a new device but her back up puts all of my data onto her phone,

Where Backups are Stored...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946

Unable to delete back-ups of time capsule

Despite many attempts, I am unable to delete copies of time capsule updates. I place the old versions in the trash, hit delete, the items start adding up but they never go away. Any idea why or what I can do?

In general, you want to delete backups of an item or items by opening the Time Machine "Star Wars" interface.
Move to a date of your choice using the scale on the right
Navigate to the folder/item that you want using the Finder like window
Click the item you want to delete to highlight it
Click the "gear" icon at the top of the window
You can "Delete Backup" to delete the backup on that specific date, or
You can "Delete All Backups" to delete all backups of that file on all backup dates
If you don't really need all of the old backups of your computer it may be easier to simply erase the disk and start over with a master backup and move forward again. If you do this, it will erase everything on the disk including backups from other computers that you may have previously setup. Post back if you need info on how to do this.
For excellent tips and "how to's", refer to Pondini's Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule document.

HT201250 stop time machine deleting back ups

Hello, I've just started using time machine, and I don't want it to delete my old backups when full - at least not without asking me first. is there any way to do this?

Something to consider about Time Machine is that it saves only one copy of each unique version of a file, even though it may appear in dozens or even hundreds of time stamped backup folders. Another is that it saves hourly backups only for a day & daily backups only for a month.
Both of these things save a lot of disk space compared to more conventional archival backup methods but as Bob Harris says, it is not the right tool if you want to save everything indefinitely.

Time Machine deleting too many old back-ups

I connect Time Machine (external drive) and start the back-up. TM takes a while to clean old back-ups to create space. Fair enough, as I have not been backing up since a month ago. This takes too long though, I get suspicious and I check Console and see that TM has deleted 5 old back-ups. It does not make any sense, I know that deleting one, at most two, would have been enough. I check the Console log and see the text below:
1/10/15 10:19:33.109 PM com.apple.backupd[415] Deleted backup /Volumes/LaCie/Backups.backupdb/John Doe’s MacBook Pro/2013-09-29-211629 containing 1.76 GB; 140.71 GB now available, 194.75 GB required
This is curious as I am sure a single TM back-up is much larger than that, at least 130GB. I get into TM via Finder and notice that each back-up for a given date has the expected size there, with all the many files from my laptop correctly saved in the back-up. And yet, when TM deletes a given back-up, it frees up only much less in terms of space and so it keeps deleting back-ups.
I have had some issues in the past with this external drive and I recently had it fixed. I have another one and I plan to switch to it as TM. Yet, I do not understand why this happens.
Macbook Pro OS X 10.9.5, 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Time Machine External Drive: La Cie Porsche 500GB

140.71 GB now available, 194.75 GB required
It appears Time Machine needs 194.75 GB to do the latest backup, but only 140.71 is available. So it keeps deleting more in an attempt to make enough space available.

I'm deleting old back ups in time machine but it's not freeing up any space

Time machine cannot back up because it is full and is not deleting old backups.
So I delete back ups myself and it doesn't fire up any space!

The problem is that the backups of the old computer are still on the volume, and Time Machine won't delete them to make room for more backups of the new one.
At the top level of the folder Backups.backupdb, there should be a subfolder with the name of each computer that has ever been backed up to that volume. Delete the one with the name of the old computer by dragging it to the Trash and emptying. I warn you, though, that sometimes the Trash will fail to empty, and then you'll probably have to erase the volume and start over. Do this only if you have at least one other complete backup of all current data (which you should have anyway.)

How do I delete old back ups in Time Machine?

Is there a way to selectively delete back ups on TM?

start Time machine, go to the backup you want, click on the "gear" action button in finder toolbar and select "delete backup".

HT3275 how do i delete old Back ups from time machine off my mac ?

I recently Tried to delete back ups from my external drive from time capsule i moved old backups to the trash but when i try to empty my frash they wont go away
i keep getting this message........... There are some locked items in the Trash. Do you want to remove all the items, including the locked ones, or just the unlocked items? iwent to get info and i set them both to read and write but i still get the same Message ,
Please help
Gbasscleff

More info here http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1526

Deleting a back-up sparsebundle while retaining other computer back ups on time capsule

I have a late 2009 2TB Time Capsule that has 3 computers backing up to it which are fine, however one of the machines I will no longer be backing up to the Time Capsule and want to delete the sparsebundle for that particular machine. However it weighs in at 900GB and i've tried with it directly connected via Ethernet on one of my other MacBooks, Wirelessly on my iMac but it sits for hours saying its immediately deleting but no luck.
I tried showing packages on the sparsebundle and remove the bands but that takes just as long regardless if i select 20 or 200 or 2000 of the bands at once to delete.
is there a good way to delete this sparsebundle and recover the 900gbs to the timecapsule so my other back ups do not get limited?
Thank you,

How to quickly remove the sparsebundle using Mountain Lion and Time Capsule
1 Go to Finder and under Shared locate your time Capsule
2 Click on Time Capsule and Finder will reveal all your sparesebundles
3 Select the one you do not want and right click on this - select Show Package Contents
4 Select the folder called bands - right click and select Move to Trash
5 Watch all the bands disappear....
6 Go back to step 2 - select your sparebundle, right click and select Move to Trash
All gone. Now go back to Time Machine and start again...
Enjoy.

How can I delete old back-ups SAP/Oralce from TSM?

Hi all,
How can I set an expiration date for old back-ups so that they are deleted when reached that date? For our R/3 Enterprise 4.7 on Oracle 9.2.0.7 / AIX 5.2 we use TSM & Backint.
BR0278I Command output of '/usr/sap/<SID>/SYS/exe/run/backint
                  Data Protection for mySAP.com(R) technology
         Interface between SAPDBA Utilities and Tivoli Storage Manager
               - Version 3, Release 3, Modification 1 for AIX LF 64-bit -
                 Build: 196 compiled on Feb 24 2003
        (c) Copyright IBM Corporation, 1996, 2003, All Rights Reserved.
BKI2027I: Using TSM-API version 5.2.2.0 (compiled with 4.2.3.0).
BKI2000I: Successfully connected to PROLE on port tdpr3ora64.
BKI0005I: Start of program at: Fri Mar 23 20:01:45 2007

expir_period will not work when using a SAP agent for backup (backint).
for TSM, you cannot set an expiration date, but you can an expiration based on number of versions.
check http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v1r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.itsmerp.doc_5.3.3/fbrg53m039.htm
you need to set a value for MAX_VERSIONS in your init[SID].utl file. Then, you init[SID].bki file will keep a count for versionning.
if you use both brbackup and brarchive, I would adive you use mutiple UTL files... and put links to multiple BKI files by adapting parameter CONFIG_FILE in your UTL file.

Unable to back up external hard drive via Time Machine. Says no room but has back ups from two previous Mac notebooks on it. Tried deleting them and now can't do anything. Any ideas?

Unable to back up external hard drive via Time Machine. Says no room but has back ups from two previous Mac notebooks on it. Tried deleting them and now can't do anything. Any ideas?

As john noted, eventually that external is probably not going to be big enough, but it certainly is for now. The HD just needs enough capacity to cover the amount of data on your internal HD, not the internal HD's total capacity.
Format/partition the external as follows and you should be set to go:
1. Connect the external HD to the MBP.
2. Open Disk Utility on the MBP.
3. Select the external HD in the left pane.
4. Click on the Erase tab.
5. Choose the Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
NOTE: if you want to zero the HD (which I always think is a good idea, but does take time), click on Security Options, click the button for Zero Out Data, click OK. The larger the HD, the longer this will take, in some cases several hours.
6. Click on Erase and wait for the entire process to finish.
7. Click the Partition tab.
8. Click on Volume Scheme: and choose the number of partitions (just one in this situation).
9. Click on the Options button (located underneath the Volume Scheme pane) and select GUID.
10. Click Apply.
11. Quit Disk Utility.
Backup your internal to the external. What application are you using to backup with? I highly recommend both SuperDuper! and CarbonCopyCloner.

I got a new phone and it won't back up anything on to my icloud because it says there isn't enough storage space, can I delete old back ups?

I am not good with technology at all. I upgraded my 3GS to a 4S and now it won't back up to my iCloud. it keeps telling me that the icloud is full and I don't have enough room to back it up.I was wondering if there is away to delete the old back ups in order to free up space?

If you no longer need the backups, you can delete them by going to Settings>iCloud>Storage & Backup>Manage Storage, tap the name of device you want to delete the backup for (under Backups at the top), then tap Delete Backup. This will permanently delete it from your account, freeing up the storage it occupies.

Deleting back ups

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