How do I delete a Time Machine back-up from my trash?

I use an external hard disc for my Time Machine back-ups.
In order to make some room on the external hard disc for some other files I wanted to store while I reformatted their original disc, I moved the Time Machine bach-ups into my iMac Trash.
Now when I try to delete thes old unwanted back-ups I get 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?
I've tried selececting Remove All Items but they just stay there.
I tried to darg them out onto the desktop but although that creates a new folder, the back-ups stay in the trash.
I've tried switching Time Macine off in the preferences bu that doesn't help.
Can anyone help me with emptying them?

dear Sue
i've tried the alt solution to empty trash but it does not work
I still got the -8003 error
for emptying time machine backups that i foolishly put in the trash
i've also tried this solution using terminal and it did not work either
http://www.imore.com/how-force-empty-trash-your-mac-using-terminal
any help you might offer would be greatly appreciated
i am using a 24 inch iMac
OSX 10.6.8
Message was edited by: summer_laughter

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How do I protect a Time Machine back up from being automatically deleted during new backups?

Hi, any help would be appreciated.
I used an external hard drive Time Machine backup to restore my music and photos after losing nearly everything during an update. I followed the instruction from Apple Support and turned on TM so I could enter and recover the needed libraries. Unfortunately I wasn't aware that TM would continuously backup for the next 7 hours as I searched for duplicate music files, merged iPhoto libraries, etc...until I received the message that TM had deleted all my backups (all the way back to 2010).
Just to head off the "how could you not know?!" comments - I had previously left TM off and just selected backup now when I attached the external drive.
The good news is that the backup I used to restore my music and iPhoto library from May still appears to be intact, so how do I make sure it doesn't get deleted the next time I back up? My concern is, once I've removed all the duplicate music and photo files I would like to back up again prior to upgrading to Yosemite - just in case I experience the same issues with losing files again I'd like to be prepared.
My external hard drive is an Iomega with 83.1 GB free of 320 GB.
I'm on a Mid-2009 MacBook Pro / 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 / 43.76 GB free of 159.18 GB
OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks
Any help would be greatly appreciated. If it's written for someone who is not very technologically advanced (read: step-by-step instructions) that would be even better! Thanks in advance!

You need to get a bigger external drive, 2 to 4 times the amount of data you are backing up. I would also recommend a minimum of 2 backups. You can do that with 2 Time Machine drives or use a clone to give you a bootable backup.
Time Machine FAQ
Try E1 in the 1st linked article.
Time Machine Troubleshooting
Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems
Time Machine Versus Clones and Archives
Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)
Clone – Data Backup
Clone – Deja Vu
Clone - SuperDuper
Clone - Synk
Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested
Commonly Used Backup Methods

How do you delete old time machine back ups?

I have a 2009 iMac (currently on Snow Leopard) that has been using Time Machine (TM) to back up to a 2009 Time Capsule (TC) since new. I have a 2011 Macbook Pro (currently on Snow Leopard soon to be Lion) that I would like to begin backing up using TM to the TC as well. The problem is that I recently did one back up of the MBP to the TC and it used almost all of the remaining space on the TC. Going forward the iMac has continued to back up to the TC creating space by deleting it's oldest back ups. The MBP however says there is not enough space to back it up. I am guessing that the TM for the MBP is unable to delete old back ups of the iMac to create space and since there is only 1 back up of the MBP it cannot delete that.
So... long story short is it okay for me to go into the TC to delete old back ups of the iMac manually and if it is how do I do that?
Thanks for your help in advance
djbrown

Is this more what you mean?
Re: Can not delete sparsebundle backup
Nov 17, 2009 8:30 PM (in response to Ricardo Blach)
+What I really need is to delete the old sparsebundle from the TC. How can I do that?+
Open your Hard Drive and look for the Time Capsule icon under the SHARED heading. Click the TC icon and a folder will appear to the right. Double click this folder.
You should now see a xxxxx.sparsebundle file for each of the computers that have been backing up. The file contains the name of the computer and the MAC address so you should be able to easily identify the xxxxx.sparsebundle file that you want to delete.
Click the xxxxx.sparsebundle file to highlight it and then click the gear shaped icon just above and select Move to Trash.
Be very careful since you will not be able to retrieve the file if you make a mistake and delete the wrong file.
That comes from https://discussions.apple.com/message/10595875#10595875
...and no, I don't think I'm related to that Dave Bean.
david

HT3275 how do i delete old time machine back ups?

I just switched to a new MBP, and my external drive does not recognize it. How do I delete old backups in order to make room on the external for the new computer's backups?
Thank you.

You could click on the time capsule in the SHARED panel in Finder, then enter your data folder and delete the sparsebundles, but that will take some hours for the delete to finish with the millions of nodes.
You could also use the airport utility and click on the DISK tab, then do a quick erase.

How do I copy my time machine back up from a smaller Hard disk to a larger hard disk; so that I can then continue to back up, through Time machine, on the larger hard disk?

I am using time machine for backing up on an external hard disk. This has now become full and every back up results in the deletion of the first back up on the hard drive.
I have bought a larger hard drive now and am trying to copy the back up from the smaller hard drive to the new larger hard drive, using Finder. This is not happening and the message I am getting is
"The volume has the wrong case sensitivity for a back up"

Hello UmeshNB,
Thanks for the question. Based on what you stated, it seems like you are not able to move a backup to another drive. I would recommend that you read this article, it may be able to help you isolate or resolve the issue.
Time Machine: How to transfer backups from the current backup drive to a new backup drive - Apple Support
If it is not formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), reformat the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a GUID partition. If you do not know how, see the steps in this article.
If the drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended but without journaling, OS X may state that "the volume has the wrong case sensitivity" to be used as a back up disk.
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
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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.
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3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.

How do I restart Time Machine back-up from scratch?

How do I restart Time Machine back-up from scratch? I have a MacBook Air that was my wife's - now given to my daughter for school. My wife never used Time Machine to back up (she simply copied files to an external drive), so before clearing her files off the Mac HD, I tried using Time Machine for the first time with an external HD. However, the Time Machine back up repeatedly failed after about 2GB of 28GB of files. I manually copied my wife's 28GB of files to another external HD and deleted all the files off the Mac HD. I then reformatted the external Time Machine drive. But when I try to use Time Machine to back up the MacBook Air as it is now with my daughter's files on the Mac HD to the external TM drive, Time Machine acts as if the 28GB of my wife's deleted files are still on the Mac HD and fails back-up after counting to about 2GB, even though there aren't even 2GB of files on the Mac HD now and nothing on the external TM drive. I don't need to save any back-ups of how the MacBook used to be - I just need to start from scratch with how the computer is now. Can anyone please tell me how to get Time Machine to think the MacBook is a brand new computer and act as if it's a first time ever back up? I tried updating to Yosemite, and tried renaming the computer in System Preferences>Sharing, plus (as noted above) deleting all the old files off the Mac HD and reformatting the external Time Machine drive - none of that worked. All I can do at the moment is manually copy my daughter's files to an external HD - very frustrating.

Hmmm.. Office is not hard to restore.
You have something major wrong (Yosemite being the primary one).
Do a verify of the source drive.. to do that you will need to boot to the recovery.. and run the disk utility from there.. it sounds like your main disk is corrupted.
Once that is complete, delete the current setup of TM and try again.. use the widget to find out why it is failing..
See Troubleshooting.
A1, A4 and A5 for further info.
http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
Good luck with it..
I would also download carbon copy cloner.. it is $40, but you can use it free for a time.. forget if a week or a month??.. to try out.. and make a proper backup before you start.. CCC is far more reliable than TM.. and in fact you might decide to simply forget about TM if it works and pays the $40.. because you can produce a bootable clone on the external drive which is a heck of a lot easier to use than TM.

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don't delete anything on the TM drive using finder. you can do it from TM interface. however, in your case it will not help because TM will always make a full backup after a system restore like you did and there is absolutely no way to avoid it. as suggested you might want to reformat the TM drive and start backups from scratch.
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How can I remove old Time Machine back-ups for a Mac I no longer have??

So, i am trying to back-up a brand new MBPro to my Time Machine but it says there's not enough room. Only 13.5 GB avail and need 284 GB. Is there a way to go into Time Machine and delete all the old back-ups from my former MBPro? (I've already migrated all the files and data to the new MBP from my iMac, also on the same Time Machine.) If I could wipe out the old MBP back-ups that should create enough room.

Delete the backups.
Q12 here. http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

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When is it safe to delete older Time Machine back-up files?

I have a 2 TB back-up drive for Time Machine back-ups. It is half full. Is it safe to delete some of the older files? If so, which ones? If the first back-up is a full back-up and not an incremental back-up, I would not want to delete it would I?

Read http://pondini.org/TM/12.html
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Although the documentation says you can copy Time Machine backups in the Finder, it's very slow and sometimes doesn't work at all.
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If the volume you're copying was encrypted by Time Machine, you may have to unlock it first. Click the Unlock button in the toolbar of the Disk Utility window.
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CAUTION: If the volume you're copying is corrupt, as shown by Repair Disk or Verify Disk in Disk Utility, then that corruption will be copied to the new drive. Don't copy data from a corrupt volume on a malfunctioning drive. Put the drive aside and don't use it until you're sure you'll no longer need the data. Then securely erase it and take it to a recycling center. Do the same if the Restore operation fails with "disk errors."

I moved some time machine back-ups to the trash and I cannot move or delete them?

I was trying to make room in my Time Machine back-up disk and I moved some files to the trash. Now I cannot delete or move them. What can I do?

The answer depends on exactly what you did to delete the files.
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Read the following, courtesy of Apple Support Communities contributor Pondini:
http://pondini.org/TM/12.html
Scroll down to the grey box for a potential fix.

How do I delete a Time Machine back-up from my trash?

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