Drive no longer being used by time machine: delete some files?

Tried unlocking and allowing myself to read and write.  Nope.  Tried holding down the option key.  Nope.
This drive is no longer being used by time machine and I want to delete some files on it.
Is there a way to do it without wiping the entire drive?

nowsthetime wrote:
It wasnt a dedicated backup and  there's other material on it that I need to keep.
That's a problem (as you've discovered).  Time Machine works best if it has it's own, exclusive partition.   See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #3 for details.
Aha!  Just found THIS. I'll post if it works. http://www.celiamania.com/wordpress/?p=1038
That will let you delete individual backups, or all backups of selected items.
If you don't have room to copy the "other" stuff elsewhere while you erase the disk, you can delete the Backups.backupdb folder.  Emptying the trash will take a very long time, and may give you permissions and/or locked file problems.  If so, see #E6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

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