How can I delete time machine backup folders moved into the trash from an external drive?

I made the mistake of moving Time Machine backup files into the trash, but I can't seem to delete them. I tried the option key when clicking on "Empty Trash" and "Secure Empty Trash" (before and after rebooting), but that always led to error 8003. The files won't allow me to change their name. Using approchaes to Terminal from three different Mac-related webpages also failed. I also tried Trash It, but it seemed to be making little progress after letting it run 48 hours. Any other suggestions before calling Apple?

Assuming these were not backups made over a network (thus not in a sparse bundle disk image), see #E6 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
But any way you empty the trash on that disk/partition is probably going to take a very long time -- there's no doubt several hundred thousand files there, perhaps a million or more.
You may have to just erase the disk (with Disk Utility) and start over.
You really shouldn't have to delete Time Machine backups, as it will do that automatically when the destination gets full. But if you really want to, see #12 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

Similar Messages

How can I delete time machine backups from my external hard rive

My 2 TB hardrive is starting to fill up, so i went to check on what is taking all the space up, aparently time machine has use 321.90GB of space on my hardrive.
if it is possible I want to be able to delete a couple of backups but if i cant delete a couple of backups then i would not mind to delete all of the backups.
Thankyou

Time Machine manages space automatically. You should not delete snapshots yourself. You also should not use the backup drive for anything but backups. If there are non-backup files on the drive, move them to another drive (which must also be backed up.)

How can I access Time Machine backups after doing an erase/reinstall of Mavericks?

I recently did a complete erase of my hard drive and re-installed Mavericks. I chose to start clean rather than use any Time Machine back-ups. I used the same external hard drive for my new Time Machine back-ups. Now I cannot open any back-ups/items prior to the re-install via Time Machine. They are listed along the right hand sidebar in Time Machine (star wars view) but will not open when clicked on.
Some files I can access if I go to the actual backup folder - ex a Pages doc BUT ff I try to open the iPhoto library from the back-up folders stored on the external drive, I get the following error message -
I cannot open the iPhoto "package" to access individual photos from these back-ups.
So - how can I get Time Machine to allow access to the pre-install back-ups??
thnx
Message was edited by: Rant&Raver
corrected some spelling errors!

To restore the library from your TM backup follow the instructions in this screenshot.
If you want to restore all of your Home folder documents you can use Migration Assistant.

How can I delete time machine back up from my computer hard drive

How can I delete time machine back up from my computer hard drive?

How to Delete a Time Machine Backup - YouTube
If you want to remove an entire Time Machine backup on a backup drive, then the easiest way to do that is to erase the backup drive using Disk Utility. However, this will delete everything on the disk:
Drive Erase Snow Leopard and Earlier
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
If you are preparing an external or a non-startup drive, then open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select the volume you wish to format from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.

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.

How can I store time machine backups on Amazon Glacier?

Hello,
How can I use time machine to backup my mac and have the time machine files stored on Amazone Glacier? upload is easy but I wonder how to restore a backup on Glacier to the mac.
Thanks.

You need to create the sparsebundle on external drive.. then copy it to the cloud store area. You cannot directly backup TM to the cloud.
And please note.. sparsebundle is a single file.. if a small file inside it corrupts.. the whole thing is corrupt. It might be repaired perhaps but any failure is far more serious than a failure in a simple backup.
I still think TM is unsuitable. You are far better using a software that can rsync to backup.. ie CCC.

How do I delete time machine backups if I can't zoom back in time?

Hi,
I'v been backing up my 250GB HD using time machine very successfully over the years. I store additional home movies that aren't on my HD on my time capsule machine in a seperate folder from the backups that are made daily. My 250GB HD is now full and it has been duplicated and placed on a much larger 1TB HD drive back inside my iMac. Because it is a new HD, time machine is wanting to do a new 250GB backup of it (which is ok), BUT there is not enough space on my time machine drive to do a 250GB backup. I need to delete the prior time machine backups to make space. However, because the HD is new, I'm unable to zoom back in time with time machine and delete backups from the time capsule. When I open time capsule in finder I see a .sparsebundle folder which I assume must contain all my old HD time machine backups. To free up time capsule space, can I simply delete the .spersebundle folder? I'm nervous to do that and don't want to mess anything up, so I'm asking for advise. Any advise would be much appreciated. Thx.

brettnbee wrote:
Hi,
I'v been backing up my 250GB HD using time machine very successfully over the years. I store additional home movies that aren't on my HD on my time capsule machine in a seperate folder from the backups that are made daily.
That's a problem, as you now see. When you get this sorted out, see #Q3 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule for an explanation and some workarounds.
because the HD is new, I'm unable to zoom back in time with time machine and delete backups from the time capsule.
You can see and delete individual backups from an old drive, per #E3 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. Deleting a lot of them will take a very long time, of course.
When I open time capsule in finder I see a .sparsebundle folder which I assume must contain all my old HD time machine backups. To free up time capsule space, can I simply delete the .spersebundle folder?
Yup, that's an option, too but will also take quite a while. See #Q5 in Using Time Machine with a Time Capsule for details.
Whatever you do, by all means, connect via Ethernet cable if at all possible. It will still be slow, but be 2-3 times faster than a good wireless connection.

How can recover a Time Machine backup deleted from my time capsule?

I made a Time Machine backup from my Time Capsule. Yesterday I entered to my Time Capsule to deleted some files and I made a mistake and deleted my backup time machine and empty the trash of my computer. Is it posible recover that Time Machine Backup? Thank you very much.

For most users, it is not possible to retrieve a file that has been deleted this way.
In order to do so, you would have needed to power off your Time Capsule immediately after the file was deleted. Then, you must open up the Time Capsule and remove the hard drive, place it in a special enclosure, and use special software to try to retrieve the data.
Even if you do this, there is no guarantee that you will be able to retrieve the file.

How can I recover time machine backup from previous iMac?

How can I recover some datas from a Time machine backup regularly done with my old imac,using now my new i7?
Problem is that when I open timemachine app,it's not giving me any chance to go "back" in the past snapshots of my desktop nor giving me any errors.So I suppose I'm doing something wrong
Any help?
Thanks

It's TimeMachine,
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16276201#16276201
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/29553/back-in-time

I deleted my Time Machine backups using Finder, now the trash won't empty

Hello
I've just been to the Apple genius bar and thought this was solved, there the trash emptied no problem. But I realized that the problem has to do with two external drives that have time machine backups on them. I deleted some of the older back ups because my drive was filling up and I didn't see any other way to delete them.
Now they can't be reinstated back where they were, and the trash won't empty using any method. I've even tried the Terminal SUMO methods on here and other sites, and the Trashi It app, and Cocktail app - nothing works.
The only solutions I've found say to wipe your back up drive completely and start over but that is NOT an option as I have ALL of my photos on there. I use my external drive for my images (I am a photographer) and use time machine to back up my MacBookPro onto there as well. I had no idea deleting those was going to be an issue. Now I've tried to delete other things on both external drives and they are all stuck in the trash.
Someone please help!

photogirl67 wrote:
I use my external drive for my images (I am a photographer) and use time machine to back up my MacBookPro onto there as well.
Not a good idea, as you've learned the hard way.
And especially bad in the same partition, as you can't just erase the TM partition.
Plus, how do you back up the images?
For best results, consider getting another external HD; one for the images, and one for TM. Then you can have Time Machine back up both your Mac and the external. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #32 for details and considerations.
But my question for Pondini is this - if I use that command will it erase that entire drive, or just the trash on it?
Just the trash folders. I've reworded those instructions a bit, hopefully more clearly and safely, and put them in #E6 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

How Can I Check Time Machine backup has worked?

Hello all
I am new to Mac and still feeling my way so please be gentle! I am not even sure if this is the right community to be in. My system runs 10.7.2 (is that lion, leaopard or penguin?)
Today I used Time Machine for the first time. Successfully formatted my external harddrive and did the first backup. Then uploaded all my photos from my camera using iphoto and did another backup.
I want to check that the back up was successfull and that my photos are on the external hard drive before I do a second backup on a different hardrive and then delete the pics from my camera. I am not sure how to check this. When I open the external harddrive I can't really understand where the iphoto files would be...
your advice and patience with a rookie would be much appreciated
Cheers
CC

Hi ChicaneChampagne
It would appear from your posts that you are failing to understand how backups and TM works...
For a better understanding see these links before going any further...
Time Machine Tutorial
How do I view or restore selected items?
Restore From Time Machine
http://support.apple.com/kb/VI29
You may also find this Link by Pondini of Interest...
http://pondini.org/TM/Clones.html

How can I do Time Machine backup when HD is on list of items to exclude?

For some reason, my Macintosh HD has ended up on my list of items to exclude from backup (in the Options section of Time Machine preferences). I can't do the recommended thing of highlighting the HD and pressing the minus sign, because my HD is grayed out on the Exclude list and unable to be highlighted. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

Pondini, you are kind to have responded, but it was my Macintosh HD -- the drive on my actual computer -- that ended up on the exclude list, preventing me from backing up my computer. Also, your suggestion to "remove Macintosh HD from the exclusion list" did not help, because that was my entire problem/question to begin with. Perhaps I could have been clearer -- it was a confusing issue, for sure.
Here is what I think happened: I have two backup hard drives, and prior to the troubled backup attempt mentioned above, I had already backed up my data to external HD #1. It seems like external HD #1 hadn't fully registered as dismounted when I switched over to external HD #2 for the second backup, so . . . oh, this is getting too detailed, but the bottom line is, after I unplugged drive #2, I plugged in drive #1 again briefly and then dismounted/unplugged it. The next time I plugged drive #2 in, "Macintosh HD" no longer appeared on my exclusion list, and the backup proceeded normally.
One more weird/happy thing came from all this trouble, and I'm dumbfounded as to why it happened: For days, I'd been getting the spinning rainbow wheel with just about every application I used -- seemed to happen every few minutes, and I was planning to make a Genius Bar appointment. Well, after these two backups were completed, my computer had no spinning wheel today -- and I was using many applications simultaneously throughout the day! If anyone has a theory on how merely the backup process described above could "cure" a persistent spinning wheel problem, I'd love to hear it!

How can I vary Time Machine backup times

Hello. Can someone tell me how I may be able to change the backup time on Time Machine. I would like to make it
longer than the present one which is every hour. Thanks.

TimeMachineEditor 3.0.2 is the tool of choice.

Can't delete Time Machine Backup Files - Authentication Issue??

Using time machine on my 20" iMac, Leopard v10.5.2 with no issues on an external Firewire 800 drive. When I go to the Time Machine view and choose a file, then the gears icon at the top so I can "Delete all backup copies of this file", when I choose to do that it brings up an authentication window asking me for my admin password however it will not let me click or type in the dialog box (though I can choose the OK or Cancel buttons). Given that I can't authenticate I can't delete back files, any clues??
Thx.
JS

I have the exact same problem, so your not alone.
When you select a file, and then delete all backups of this file, you get asked to authenticate, but aside from being able to click any of the buttons, it will not allow you to enter a name and password.
I first thought this may be due to the text not being visable, but even when entering the correct admin username and password, still nothing happens. All your able to do is click cancel to get out of the time machine area.
Clicking OK just gets a wrong password entered message.
I've tried doing a permissions repair and a disk util check, all is fine. Even techtool pro 4.6 checks out fine.

Can I reconnect Time Machine backup after drive swap on OS X 10.6?

Hi,
I swapped my MacMini's HD few days ago (previous one was dying, had hardware issues). I used CCC and replaced with a hybrid drive. So far, so good. However, when I plugged back the external USB drive were I keep my Time Machine backups, it is not being recognized, TM wants to run a new full set.
I did some research and discovered that TM may use the HD or machine's UUID and that's why it's triggering the new FULL.
I also found this article by Pondini (which seems to be a guru on the topic, lol ):
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090213071015789
But attrb is not working, I guess such command it's not available on 10.6.8 ? ...
How can I reconnect Time Machine backups to the new HD? Or ... I simply cannot and I will have to delete and run a FULL set? I would prefer to keep my old backups, if possible, but it seems that with my OSX version that's not possible without workarounds.
Thanks in advance,

** EDIT **
The trick did not work :-(
I entered into TM and while I can see the old backups , I can't select them or do anything with them. Clearly, they have not been identified as previous backups, hence the reason for Today's FULL.
Ohh boy ... I'm about to give up ...

How can I delete time machine backup folders moved into the trash from an external drive?

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