Manually deleting Time Machine Backups Via Finder?

Hi everyone,
I'll just pose the question right away:
Is it safe (and feasible) to navigate through my external HD in which I've set up for Time Machine via the Finder and manually select and delete back ups (ie. drag them to the trash can)? Thanks!
If you really want to know why I ask, please read below:
I recently had my logic board replaced. Then I noticed my system was not backing itself up via Time Machine. After a few Google searches I found out that when you replace your logic board, your MAC address changes I also found out that Time Machine pairs its backups via MAC addresses.
I found a procedure to help pair your new MAC address to your previous Time Machine backups from the old logic board and MAC address, this required finding your old MAC address, something I could not do. However also read that after completing the procedure, Time Machine will do a FULL backup, backing up all it had basically. It would not have fit on my external HD anyways.
So my plan was instead to start Time Machine fresh with this new logic board and MAC address. However, it needed to do a full backup as well, and I don't have space for that. I don't want to wipe my external hard drive and start from there, because I'm afraid that something will crash in the whole process of starting a new set of backups. What can I do is, delete a set of backups from the old logic board. I am aware of how to do this via the Time Machine interface. But because of my new logic board/MAC address, I cannot view those backups in that Time Machine interface. After having a steady set of new backups, then I'll delete ALL of the old backups.
Thanks ahead of time for any help.

jusdel wrote:
But because of my new logic board/MAC address, I cannot view those backups in that Time Machine interface.
Ah, you haven't found the fairly well-hidden +*Browse Other Time Machine Backups+* option.
See #17 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

Similar Messages

Deleted Time Machine Backups from Finder

I back up my MacBook with Time Machine. My girlfriend has an older MacBook Pro, with Tiger. I was surprised to see that Tiger did not come with any sort of backup utility, and I eventually found Super Duper. I made a backup with Super Duper to my external hard drive with my Time Machine backups. Her computer died, and she took it to Apple. They could not restore her data, which wasn't a big problem because I had made a very recent back up.
I then proceeded to restore the backup. I thought SD kept track of what files belonged to what computer, like TM does. It started copying my TM backups to her hard drive. This wouldn't be a problem, except she only has a 160 GB hard drive, and her backup is about 100 GB and my TM backup was another 100 GB. Thus the file restore would fail. I decided to delete the TM folder, because I was not worried about my computer, and I could create another backup after partition to avoid this disaster again.
I deleted the TM backups... and my drive still had 200 GB of used space. Then I used Google to find out how I royally messed this up. That being said and done, I have had Disk Utility repairing my external hard drive since Thursday at 5p, and it's now 8:40a on Saturday. Furthermore, while I deleted the files, SD still enumerates them and somehow copies them which fills the hard drive before the restore is complete. When I plugged my external hard drive into my MacBook, it automatically started a new TM back up. However, it renamed the folder "Andrew Fawcett's something (2)", as if it were a duplicate folder. So OS 10.5.8 knows somehow that there are files, and so does SD, but I cannot see them.
Apple's support told me to delete the TM backups in Finder... and to fix the invibile files to reformat the drive. How do I fix my TM backups so I can get SD to work? I have files I need to restore! From what I've read, there are a few of you familiar with SD.

afawcett wrote:
I back up my MacBook with Time Machine. My girlfriend has an older MacBook Pro, with Tiger. I was surprised to see that Tiger did not come with any sort of backup utility, and I eventually found Super Duper. I made a backup with Super Duper to my external hard drive with my Time Machine backups. [snip]
I then proceeded to restore the backup. I thought SD kept track of what files belonged to what computer, like TM does. It started copying my TM backups to her hard drive. This wouldn't be a problem, except she only has a 160 GB hard drive, and her backup is about 100 GB and my TM backup was another 100 GB. Thus the file restore would fail. I decided to delete the TM folder, because I was not worried about my computer, and I could create another backup after partition to avoid this disaster again.
I deleted the TM backups... and my drive still had 200 GB of used space. Then I used Google to find out how I royally messed this up. That being said and done, I have had Disk Utility repairing my external hard drive since Thursday at 5p, and it's now 8:40a on Saturday. Furthermore, while I deleted the files, SD still enumerates them and somehow copies them which fills the hard drive before the restore is complete. When I plugged my external hard drive into my MacBook, it automatically started a new TM back up. However, it renamed the folder "Andrew Fawcett's something (2)", as if it were a duplicate folder. So OS 10.5.8 knows somehow that there are files, and so does SD, but I cannot see them.
Apple's support told me to delete the TM backups in Finder... and to fix the invibile files to reformat the drive. How do I fix my TM backups so I can get SD to work? I have files I need to restore! From what I've read, there are a few of you familiar with SD.
SuperDuper! copies entire volumes. That's why it tried to transfer those Time Machine files. If you register SuperDuper! (USD28), you can tell it to exclude certain files, such as those TM files.
If you want to use an external drive for both TM and other storage, you might be happier if you partitioned that drive, using one partition for TM and the other for any other files.
Until you have this resolved, I'd turn off TM on both computers.

Deleted time machine backups in Finder, now what?

I know this was foolish, but I didn't do any research before hand. My external drive had 8Gs left and the Time Machine window said it couldn't backup because it was almost full. I thought it also said something about deleting previous Time Machine backups, so I selected the first 10 or so and put them in the trash. Then when I tried to empty the trash, it took forever (still going right now at 317,996 items to delete). Anyway, my question is, now what? I am not concerned about the older backups but do I need to do anything special for a proper backup of the iMac now? Should I start over or will Time Machine fill in the gaps. I have been searching on the forum but I still don't understand how this works. Any help is greatly appreciated!

photobug mjm wrote:
do I need to do anything special for a proper backup of the iMac now? Should I start over or will Time Machine fill in the gaps. I have been searching on the forum but I still don't understand how this works.
Sorry, I neglected to answer this before.
Assuming there's no damage, or it's repairable, then no, you don't need to do anything more, although you should do a new backup as soon as you're sure the existing backups are ok.
What you've lost is only the backups of any files and folders that existed only at the time of the backups you deleted.
So if those "first 10 or so" were your oldest backups, all you've done is what TM would have done anyway, although perhaps a bit faster. If they were your more recent ones, then you've lost the copies of items that were added or changed after the time of the oldest one still there.
It is a strange concept, and a very powerful system, but let me put it this way: TM will never delete it's copy of anything that's still on your system, or was there at the time of any remaining backup.
You manually deleting them works exactly the same way.
This is the "magic" of the "multi-links" that TM uses. Think of them as multiple, extra-fancy aliases. Every backup contains "links" to TM's copy of every item that was on your Mac at the time of that backup. So a file that's not been changed in a long time will have a whole passel of them; a new file will only have one, or a few. What you deleted were these links; the actual backup copies are only deleted from the TM disk when the last link to it is deleted.
So . . . you may have dodged a bullet!

Deleting Time Machine Backup in Finder

I had been using Time Machine on an external drive for a few years and then when I stopped using that drive for backups and started putting files on it, I made the mistake of trying to manually delete all of the backups. Now, the entire backup is stuck in my trash folder and finder doesn't seem to be able to delete it regularly. Any help would be great, thanks.

Perhaps Terminal commands!?
Solving Trash Problems...
http://thexlab.com/faqs/trash.html

How to delete Time Machine backups from Trash

OK, so you deleted Time Machine backups via Finder and now you can't delete them from Trash.
First of all - you should NOT delete Time Machine backups in this way.
BUT all is not lost - to remove the backup folders from your Trash can, all you need to do is hold down the Alt key whilst using the Empty Trash facility.
Hope this helps.

I have same problem keep getting annoying error something like 8003. trying to delete all of my back ups as well as the one back up i placed in the trash

How to delete time machine backups from trash bin

Hello,
I've got a little issue with time machine and doing something stupid on my part. I have seen different posts on this question, but it appears that most people haven't found a working solution, so I want to see if anybody has more insight.
A few weeks back I found that there were some files and folders that were getting backed up to time machine that I didn't want getting backed up for various reasons. Rather than wisely removing the individual folder and files like I've since learned, I removed the whole backup for that date to the trash bin. I know, bad choice.
I've tried to empty trash bin and delete the backups altogether, but error codes and permissions keep me from doing that. Space isn't an issue on the external drive I use for Time Machine, so I'd be fine with just getting the files OUT of trash and back into the folder with other backup dates-now that I know how to delete individual files. When I try and drag them back to TM folder from trash, get another error message saying something along the lines of the "drive not being able to be modified".
I've heard of some people using Terminal to remove files, while other folks say that that's dangerous and asking for bigger problems in the OS. So, what are my BEST options? Just want to get locked files out of the trash bin, don't care where they go at this point. I've tried the secure trash delete option and some other simple suggestions with no luck. Backups still sitting in trash.

Hi DonnaR,
What's not good is to remove them via the Finder or any way other than within Time Machine
Unfortunately this is what I did, and I know better now, but I can't undo what foolish thing I did. I have tried the steps to a T that you included in earlier post from this page- http://pondini.org/TM/E6.html using the Terminal method. The files are still sitting in trash, no change. I have also done the "secure trash" thing holding down option key and that hasn't worked either. I have also done repeated REPAIR DISK operations of the external drive within Disk Utility and a freeware program called Maintenance, and unless there' some special reboot needed, I still see the files there. At this point, and after reading more on pondini.org, I'd rather figure out a way to "Put Back" deleted backups sitting in trash bin to their place in Time Machine folder via finder, if I could figure out a permissions way around the error message I get saying "The operation can’t be completed because backup items can’t be modified." Is there some way of tricking the Finder window into letting me copy back items somehow? Once I get them back in, I will go through and delete the files from INSIDE Time Machine Star Wars view like suggested. Force deleting items from trash using TrashIt or OnyX is my very last resort. Once I get this figured out, I intend to upgrade to Mavericks, but I want to do it with everything working and clean. Thanks again!

HT201250 is there any way to retrieve deleted time machine backups?

is there any way to retrieve deleted time machine backups? it has now deleted the oldest, but most important backup. It was made right before before upgrading to mountain lion. Because I had some issues with placing the files back the way I wanted, I had to connect my hard drive to my mac several times. Result, everytime I did so, a backup was made. Like today, when I was transferring everything from that specific backup. But in the meantime Time Machine made a new backup, deleting the old one I was using. Ironically, I lost everything while I was transferring the files back to my mac. Please give me good news.

Once the external hard drive that you use for Time machine deleted its oldest backup and overwrote it, the ability to retrieve those files disappeared. They are gone for good.
Hope this helps

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.

Can I delete individual Time Machine backups using Finder

I recent fount necessary to do a complete install and restore. As I was having trouble with system performance, I chose to restore Applications from Time Machine and set the system parameters manually. In the process, I wound up with some very large (50 Gbytes) on my Desktop. I neglected to turn off time Machine backup while doing the restoration and wound up with several big(!) files in the back ups taken during the restoration. There is nothing useful on the backups taken during the restoration and they have really filled up my backup disk. Looking at the structure of the backup disk, it seems you could just delete the backups after I started to restore things. Are there other considerations? Are there hidden tables laying around that might become unsynchronized?

Hi Kappy,
Thanks for the lead. I did not realize there were these capabilities other than restoration in Time Machine. I looked in the help for Time Machine and found this
"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."
Seems like I can just delete, with the Finder, the backups taken after I started the restore.

Deleting time machine backup files manually didn't free up disk space ?

I wanted to delete some certain files from my time machine backup as i dont need them anymore. I opened up time machine and selected the drive i used for the backup job and deleted them by selecting "delete this files from backup". this should be the proper way to delete backup files manually i assume from what i've read so far.
but,
i had 30gb free space before deleting files and even after deleting around 80gb from the backup, my drive still shows that there is only 30gb free space. i checked the trash can but nothing's in there.
how on earth will i delete these files to save up some space?
* i am not going to take any backups anymore to this folder but i want some certain files to stay while some others must go

Ok, I appologize for my criticism ( I am trying to help and maybe this bunch of giberish I am laying out has some useful infomation) but that is not a good idea at all in my opinion. And here is why, (I am going to assume you are using the Time Capsule from Apple (hardware) along with the program in the system preferences called Time Machine (software)). But even if you are using lets say an external hard drive and using Time Machine, then it is still not a good idea,.... and my reasoning is this... you should not have a back up on the same hard drive as stuff you store stuff on. In case if the hard drive goes bad, you dont loose both the backup and the items on the hard drive. (sorry I am going to try to answer your question, but first I just want to say how I have my system set up.) I ocassionally do use my Time Capsule also as an external hard drive but mostly I use my Time Capsule (strictly for backing up) and I also have an external hard drive where I keep my Movies, and Music (inside my Music folder I have the folder "iTunes" folder). Now you could go to system preferences, and shut off Time Machine, and then your Time Capsule would be fully available to you as an external hard drive. If you open up your finder, and look to the left hand side column, under "shared" location you will see your Time Capsule or if you have an external hard drive connected directly to the computer, then under "devices" you will see that external hard drive. Ok, assuming you are using Time Capsule (even though you are using it as an external hard drive) there will be a folder, (most likely called: first name last name's Time Capsule) and inside that folder you will see all the computers that back up to that one Time Capsule (most likely called: computer name.sparsebundle). just select the file and and "command" + "delete" the file or drag it to the trash, and your entire backup will be deleted, then turn off backing up in your system preferences. Now as I was saying before, that defeats the purpose of the backing up. I would get an external hard drive, in addition to the Time Capsule and putting your Movies, and Music on that external hard drive, and not touching your Time Machine backups. But then your left with figuring out how to back up your external hard drive. Do you use some sort of program other than TM or is there a way to use TM for that external HD. (that I do not know). I have Time Machine for my computer, and I have an external hard drive, that i manually (once in a blue moon) make a copy of that external hard drive to another hardrive. So at any given time I have three hard drives - one Time Capsule, and two external hd's. But I would never put both backups and data in the same location.

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.

Incorrectly Deleted Time Machine Backups

I'm helping a relative who apparently was lead astray recently by a friend. She had a Macbook, with a full disk of Time Machine backups. She bought a new Macbook Pro to replace the Macbook. Her friend manually deleted some of the TM backups from her backup disk to make room for new backups of the new machine.
I believe he did this via the Finder, simply by deleting the oldest dated folders within the Backups.backupdb folder. I gather that this is a no-no because all the files are linked. I understand that you have to do it through the Time Machine "star wars" interface.
If this person deleted old backups via the Finder, does that mean that the remaining backups of the old Macbook are useless? Is there any point in keeping them?
Many thanks to anybody who can shed any light --
Steve

Okay, I understand. But I read this page, explaining Hard Links:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Works.html
Based on what I see there, it ought to be possible to manually delete the dated folders within the backups.backupdb folder -- since the "files" in those folders are just hard links to the actual backup data.
The structure is:
backups.backupdb
         Joe's Macbook
               date 1
               date 2
               date 3
               etc.
It's the oldest of those dated folders that were deleted. That means that all of the other dated folders won't work with TM?
Also, can you explain what you meant when you said that "They can still be used to restore manually." Do you mean, via a simple finder copy?
Many thanks for your help --
Steve

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.

Accidentally deleted Time Machine backups into Trash...

I messed up big time -- I moved my Time Machine backups into Trash from Finder. I've looked around online and it seems like I've really screwed myself over. I can't reformat/erase the disk because I have about 1.4 TB of other material on it and I don't have any other disk big enough to temporarily hold all these files. Is there any way to either restore or delete the backups without harming the rest of the files on the disk?

Full Details Here from Pondini....
Can't empty the trash after deleting backups via the Finder

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I manually deleted several Time Machine backups from my external HDD. Whenever I attempt to empty trash, it states (error code -22) has occurred. How do I fix my predicament?
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I am running Mac OS 10.10 on a 13" MacBook Air (mid-2013) w/ 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD. My external drive is a 5400 RPM WD USB 2.0 External Hard Drive.

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