How do i delete all backups on my new 2TB time Machine

Guys, I have been having some issues with my new Time machine, and im trying to delete everything on the machine and try to start over from scratch, i cant seem to find how to do that yet. any help would be appreciated.
My TM says it has 676mb of 2TB.......

Thanks for the info.
Open up AirPort Utility
Click on the Time Capsule icon, then click Edit in the small window that appears
Click the Disks tab at the top of the next window
Click Erase Disk
Use the Quick Erase option...will only take a minute or two

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After i updated one of my three macs to Maverics, i've stumbeled apon a "problem".
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I think maybe i was to eager and didn't wait long enough. This time i waitet for the backups to "load" up, and it did.
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Try using the following information to attempt to delete your backup filed another way:
OS X Mountain Lion: Remove a backed-up item from your backup disk
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11241
Without entering Time Machine’s starfield, you can move, copy, or delete the Backups.backupdb folder on your Time Machine backup disk as you would other folders. You can also delete folders within the Backups.backupdb folder. You can’t delete individual items inside the dated folders.
Important: Do not use Terminal or any application other than Finder to move, copy, or remove items from the Backups.backupdb folder.
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Hello,
I am having trouble with Time Machine since I updated to Mavericks. Time Machine tells me that I have insufficient space on my external hardrive (1TB) even though in Time Machine it only has one full backup. If I Get Info on the drive it says Capacity 999.72GB, Available 71.37GB and Used 928,35GB.
In Finder I used to be able to delete older backups if needed but generally Time Machine did what it was supposed to - it overwrote old backups. I can no longer find the files to delete and TM only says I have one full backup.
How can I uncover these, what appear to be, hidden files? Something must be there as I have no space left!
The external hard drive is 2TBp partioned, I also seem to have lost all of the data from the non-TM partition, which is not great either.
Please let me know if you need any other information.
Thanks in advance for any help.

Do you use virtualization software, such as VMware, Parallels, or VirtualBox?
The virtualization software creates a large virtual-disk container that is constantly changing, so it has to be backed up every time Time Machine runs. That will quickly fill up any backup destination.
You should exclude the virtual-disk file(s) from your Time Machine backups. To do that, click the Options button in the Time Machine preference pane. Back up the files on the virtual disk from within the guest system, using a native backup application.
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1) Can anyone tell me how to force the trash to empty?
2) Is there a way to delete the whole external HD and start over with a new full backup via Time Machine? In Disk Utility I try to erase the partition and get an error "Volume Erase failed with the error: Couldn't unmount disk." Then I try to Unmount it and get another "Unmount failed. The disk Backup iOmega could not be unmounted. Make sure that all applications and files are closed on this disk." I turned off Time Machine and tried again but with the same errors.
The external HD is called iOmega. It only connects to the iMac with USB. Any help is much appreciated!!!!

Try this instead:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. Select the backup volume 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.)
4. Click on the Erase button.
You will need to reconfigure Time Machine preferences for the backup.
FYI: Never remove Time Machine backup data except through the Time Machine application. If you aren't sure about using Time Machine then visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things related to Time Machine.

"Delete All Backups" command not working...

I just started using Time Machine for the first time about a month ago with my new MacBook Pro. Recently, it started notifying me that it was out of space and automatically deleting the oldest backups, which I thought was odd, because my external Time Machine backup partition is 500GB and my startup disk only had 150GB of data (on a 260GB partition). Well, after checking the backups I quickly found the problem. I have three partitions on my internal drive, and Time Machine was backing them all up (I had thought Time Machine would only back up my startup disk). So I added the other two partitions to the "disks to Exclude list". That part worked and my new backups only include my startup drive. But I want to get rid of the all the backups of my other partitions, so I opened up Time Machine and tried to manually delete their backups, but it's not working.
I've read that you can select the volumes/folders and choose the "Delete all backups of ..." option to remove them. I also read that it should take some time to complete this. But it's been over 24 hours and still it hasn't removed any of the backups I want to get rid of. And there seems to be no activity on the Time Machine drive. So what gives? Why isn't Time Machine honoring my request to delete all backups of these partitions/folders? I've repeated the process a few times, and each time the authentication dialog appears and my password is accepted, so everything looks like it should work, but it hasn't.
My first thought was that maybe Time Machine won't delete the backup of a folder/partition that it's already excluding. So I turned off automatic Time Machine backups, and removed the two partition volumes from my exclude list and then tried again to delete all their backups. It's been a few hours since then, and still nothing is deleting. How long should it take? And is there some trick to manually deleting the backups outside of Time Machine that I could try?
I guess if nothing else I could try and reformat the Time Machine backup disk and start over, but I shouldn't have to right? This is really puzzling...

daehl wrote:
SOLVED!
Yes, It appears that Time Machine CANNOT delete files that are locked for some reason.
that's not true. it's perfectly capable of doing that.
Originally I assumed that since I could not delete a file directly from within the Time Machine volume's "Backups.backupdb" subfolders, that I would not be able to unlock it. But you can! I simply located the files in the backup, chose Get Info on them and un-checked their "Locked" checkbox.
something is really wrong with your backups. you should not even be able to unlock any locked files in TM backups as they should be all protected by hidden ACLs to prevent people from messing with them from finder.
And the lock status change took effect! Then went back to Time Machine and chose "Delete All Backups of..." and selected the volume in that backup, and they instantly disappeared!!!
That's pretty strong empirical proof that Time Machine has a problem with locked files.
no, it's a strong evidence that your TM backups are messed up.
I have repeated it with about a dozen various files that were locked and all behaved the exact same way. So I think this is pretty strong evidence to a "bug" in Time Machine!

How do i delete all backups on my new 2TB time Machine

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