Proper way to delete my time machine backups?

Hello everyone,
I am new here, but have used the communities to solve issues with my macs.
I have a question about Time Machine. I have a macbook pro that I have backed up with time machine for over two years now. It works fine.
I just bought an imac and want to use the disk I was backing up the macbook to backup the new imac instead. I have another disk I am going to use for the macbook. I do not have Time capsule. It is all cable connections.
So my questions are:
1- Can I move the TM files from the old disk to the new one? How do I do that so that TM will not complain that the old back is missing on the macbook?
2- Once I get that done, should I format the disk before I start using it with the imac?
Thanks!
M

So my questions are:
1- Can I move the TM files from the old disk to the new one? How do I do that so that TM will not complain that the old back is missing on the macbook?
The answer is yes, but it may not be a great idea.
The way TM works is fairly complex and corruption fairly easy.. unfortunately you tend not to know about it until you actually need the backup. It is a much better idea to archive the backup up to the present time. And start a fresh TM backup on the disk.
In my testing though, I did copy the sparsebundle from a TC to a NAS with TM ability. Then reset the TM to using the existing TM backup directory on the NAS, and it picked up and used the old sparsebundle and worked fine. To trust it, which you will note I don't readily do.. I would still do a restore to a different target disk. Try it yourself.. since you are playing around and you can easily use the disks you have. Try doing a restore of whole disk.. it is a great exercise in how long this takes.. obviously use a different target disk. Start it when you go to bed as it can take several hours.
The grand guru is pondini .. study his knowledge base of FAQ and troubleshooting until your eyes bleed.
http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html
On copying TM backups to another location.
http://pondini.org/TM/18.html
But note carefully his comments..
HDD are cheap btw.. just buy another and archive the existing one. In a year or two and you have never needed anything from it, and you have current backups.. then wipe and reuse it.. but I found keeping old hard disks from previous computers (or backups) as long term archives has got lost files back where nothing else worked.
2- Once I get that done, should I format the disk before I start using it with the imac?
Thanks!
M
Yes, I would always format before using.. issues on a disk will show up. But note the above if this is wiping your old backups.. think hard about the value of not just buying another drive.

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It would be much better if you had separate drives for the pictures and Time Machine backups.....but, if you want to use the same drive for both purposes, temporarily move the folder with the pictures to another location for safe storage.
Run the Time Machine backup on the hard drive and verify that everything is working correctly. Time Machine will format the disk for you in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as part of the backup process.
Then move the folder with the pictures back to the hard drive with the Time Machine backups.
When you have tested to make sure that everything is working again, then and only then should you delete the folder with pictures from the temporary storage area.
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hopesdead wrote:
None of that worked. I used the Terminal method. No good.
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Please triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
tmutil compare | open -ef
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.
Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear below what you entered.
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
Files that you’ve excluded from backup, or that are excluded automatically, are ignored.
At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.
Caution: Under some conditions, tmutil may falsely flag files as not having been backed up when in fact they have been. It can be confused by multi-linked files, or by files with a modification date earlier than the one in the snapshot. This will not be an issue for most users. If the results of the above procedure surprise you, inspect your snapshots directly.

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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.
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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.
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jthedwalker wrote:
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http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html

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SeannX wrote:
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I accidentally ordered my Mac to delete the "entire entry for Dec 28."
I then got out of the Star Wars interface, and clicked the X(cancel) button on the "Preparing to delete stuff" progress bar.
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Message was edited by: x86_64

first, you should back up regularly. backing up once in 4 months does not qualify in any way. secondly, you should NOT use TM backups as a storage tool. a backup is a second copy, not the only copy. and this is especially true for TM. using it for storage is highly likely to result in a loss of data because TM constantly thins past backups (which it does silently and without any warning). also, when it runs out of space it starts deleting old backups to make room for new ones. it's supposed to warn you about it the first time it does it but that warning is easy to miss and it sometimes doesn't show up at all.
so if you have something on that backup you deleted from the main drive, restore it from TM and do another full backup. and don't use TM backups for storage from now on.

Proper way to delete my time machine backups?

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