Why can't I delete old backups from Time Machine?

I can actually delete them, but cannot empty them from the Trash Can.
Any ideas?

You should avoid deleting backups yourself, but you are determined to do it anyway read the following, courtesy of Apple Support Communities contributor Pondini:
12. Should I delete old backups? If so, How?
Your question is likely addressed in the third paragraph from the end.

Similar Messages

  • Deleting old backups from Time Machine/Time Capsule

    I've spent a long time deleting copies of old back ups from Time Machine today. In view of this am I right in assumming this should in turn reduce the size of sparsebundle on TC?  If not, please can someone tell me how I can reduce the size of sparsebundle on my 2TB TC; my MacBook has 150GB HD and my sparsebundle is 500GB in size.  I want to address the amount of backups I keep as I do not wish to have a TC clogged up with multiple monthly backups of data each month, which in my opinion is pretty redundant.

    A sparsebundle file behaves differently than a normal file or folder. As you add data to the sparsebundle file, it expands as long as there is room on the drive. But, if you delete data from the sparsebundle, the size of the file remains the same, even though the data has been deleted.
    You will be able to add more data to the sparsebundle, and it will continue to expand as long as there is room on the drive.
    If you want to "compact" the sparsebundle file to have it indicate the exact amount of data in the file, there is a Terminal command that you can use for this purpose.
    See the pink box in this link for excellent information provided by Time Capsule -- Time Machine guru Pondini:
    http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/12.html

  • How can I restore an old backup from Time Machine to my iPhone 5?

    I have the iPhone 5 that I had previously transferred my apps and other data to from my iPhone 4. Due to poor battery life, I had to restore the iPhone 5 as a new phone. This helped battery life but now I habve lost my text messages, App data and photos. I use Time Machine on my Mac so whayt do I need to do to get the data back on my phone. I'd like to do this without restoring the phone but rather syncing it with data recovered from Time Machine. I don't want to screw up the battery life again.

    Hi ...
    I've found a solution to my problem.
    Time Machine locates extenal HDD backups differently depending if they were done via a network or via a USB/FireWire/Thunderbolt connection.
    My initial backup was done via a direct Thunderbolt connection. I ran into the above issue b/c the second time when I tried looking for the backup file the HDD was conencted to my iMac and I was accessing it via a network conenction.
    I simply connected the drive directly to my MacBook pro and ... voila. I was able to see the backup, select the iPhoto library and begin the restore.
    Hope this helps.
    BTW - I found this out by reading the 'blue box' selection on this page: http://pondini.org/TM/E2.html
    (Thanks goes to Pondini!)

  • Delete old Backups from Time Capsule

    Deleting old Backups from Time capsule ist very slow.
    How could it be faster?
    Where can i change the preferences?
    Which Programm changes Preferences?
    If its possible answers in German;-)
    Thanks

    Deleting old Backups from Time capsule ist very slow.
    Deleting Time Machine backups can be slow. Löschen von Time Machine-Backups können nur langsam voran.
    How could it be faster?
    Unfortunately, there isn't any settings that you can make to speed them up. Leider gibt es keine Einstellungen, die Sie vornehmen können, um sie zu beschleunigen.

  • How to delet old backups in time machine

    How to delete old backups in time machine.
    I have no space left for new backups

    See Here  >  Should I delete old backups?  If so, How?
    From Here  >  http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html

  • How do I delete old emails from time machine?

    How do you delete all old email backups from time machine?

    Could we please get one more clue? 
    What email application are you asking about? 

  • How can i delete a 'backups' from time machine for a computer i no longer have

    i have been using my time capsule for a few years now, everything was great until my imac died and i had to replace it
    when i did, the time capsule worked perfectly, as it allowed me to "migrate" all my backed up data onto my new machine, joy
    but now, as it wants to start its backups of the new imac, there just isnt enough disk space on the drive, and i suspect this is due to every file on my new machine is marked as never have being backed up which means i need like 400G, and most of the time capsule's space is still consumed by the old backups
    how can i remove this old back up from the time capsule without reformatting the whole drive (i have other machines that are still using the backup service and i dont want that interrupted)
    it just seems like, since i am no longer on the old machine, i cant access that machine's backup in order to delete them (through the time machine interface), and i cant seem to find a single tutorial on how to do this that is written in non-programmer speak (i really dont feel comfortable cracking open terminal and command-lining this sort of thing)
    am i just nuts or is this really all that uncommon a problem with no easy solution?!?
    any advice is appreciated, thanks in advance

    how can i remove this old back up from the time capsule
    click here for instructions.

  • HT203177 how do i clear old backups from time machine to make more space

    My 2TB Time Machine is nearly full.  I am trying to back up a drive in a Mac Min that is starting to fail and wanted to do so on Time Machine.  Unfortunately since my Time Machine is nearly full it will not back up drive without eliminating nearly all of the files on this Mini.  I am okay overwriting the other backups already on the Time Machine but do not know how to force Time Machine to do so.  Please any clues on how to make Time Machine overwrite other backups would be greatly appreciated.

    About TM "Backup Drive is Full" Alert
    TM only deletes older files if they have been deleted from the source and when TM needs space on the backup drive for a new incremental backup. Time Machine "thins" it's backups; hourly backups over 24 hours old, except the first of the day; those "daily" backups over 30 days old, except the first of the week. The weeklies are kept as long as there's room.
    So, how long a backup file remains depends on how long it was on your Mac before being deleted, assuming you do at least one backup per day. If it was there for at least 24 hours, it will be kept for at least a month. If it was there for at least a week, it will be kept as long as there's room.
    Note, that on a Time Capsule the sparsebundle grows in size as needed, but doesn't shrink. Thus, from the user's view of the TC it appears that no space has been freed, although there may be space in the sparsebundle.
    Once TM has found it cannot free up enough space for a new backup it reports the disk is full. You can either erase the backup drive and start your backups anew or replace the drive with a larger drive.
    As you can see Time Machine does prune old backups to make space, but eventually it may no longer succeed. Then you will get the alert. You can delete old backups if you wish, but only using the Time Machine application.

  • Deleting past backups from time machine disk

    Hi all
    I was wondering how do you delete old time machine backups?
    Josh

    Hi Barry,
    I don't know about Josh's reasons, but I can give you two from my personal experience:
    1) If you use an OS X Server that shares one of its drives as a Time Machine location for the clients, they will create sparsebundles (containing the Backups.backupdb) on the share. The also do backup thinning, but if the drive runs out of space and more than one backup is currently running it is possible that the backup fails due to free space suddenly being not available anymore. It usually works fine with only 1 concurrent backup.
    2) You want to move your TM partition to another drive/partition and it is a little too big for that. Deleting some old backups can help.
    Björn from frozen Germany

  • Why can't I restore a file from Time Machine?

    I purchased a new Macbook Pro a month ago. I migrated all my stuff from my previous Macbook that was running Maverick. All went well. However, I was looking for a particular file. Apparently I had removed it from my old Mac at some point, but I found it in Time Machine. My backups are on an external hard drive. Again, I can see the file in Time Machine, but I can't seem to do anything with it.
    To that end, I see two files: one has shows the file size, and the other (same name, file type, etc...) says "Calculating size"...forever.
    Thoughts? Suggestions?

    Launch the Console 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 and start typing the name.
    The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
              SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
    from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
              View ▹ Show Log List
    from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
    Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then try the restore operation again. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
    The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
    Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
    Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
    Some private information, such as your name or email address, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

  • Cannot retrieve old backups from time machine

    Two weeks ago I brought my iMac to the apple store for the hard drive replacement program.
    I backed up everything before bringing it in and deleted most of my data.
    When it came back, it looked exactly the same as how I brought in. (Most things were deleted.)
    I tried to restore one folder to test out the function, and then I was off to work when I saw the files transferring.
    After I finished work, the files finished transferring but when I go back into time machine, all my recent backups were from today and my previous backups were all gone.
    Is there any ways to retrieve my old backups?
    Some of my important files were only stored in this external hard drive...
    Thank you...

    Wimek,
    According to this KB article (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1760)
    "When upgrading from one Leopard-based Mac to a new Leopard-based Mac, and you wish to use Time Machine backups from the previous Mac, make sure the computer name of the new Mac (in Sharing preferences) is the same as your previous Mac's computer name was when its Time Machine backups were made. Afterwards, if the previous Mac is still on your network, give it a different computer name."

  • Can I manually delete older backups of Time Machine?

    I have an external drive for use with Time Machine. I only want to keep the latest backup. Will it cause a problem if I go into the drive - select the older dated backups - right click and move to trash?
    I don't want to wait for the disk to become full so time machine can delete them, as I have other files on the hard drive, and will add more.
    Thanks

    So if I partition a 1tb external hard drive, I can allocate 500GB for my time machine backups,(which will allow time machine to fill that 500gb space up and delete when necessary) and the other 500GB for other backed up files?
    Yes.
    Would this be a better method than having my time machine backups and other files together on the one partition?
    Yes.
    Is the reasoning behind not sharing the time machine drive with other non TM backups because it wastes more space as TM just keeps using up more until it's full?
    Sort of. The problem with sharing TM backups with other files is what you described. A volume specified for TM backups eventually becomes full as a normal consequence of using it. At that point you are faced with the problem of adding more, non - TM backups to a volume that has reached its capacity: you can't. Tampering with Time Machine backups increases the possibility of corruption should you delete backups in a manner not consistent with the way Time Machine creates and maintains them.
    Time Machine's biggest advantage is that it requires no user intervention, and is ideally suited to those who lack the discipline or skills to routinely perform this tedious exercise. Its biggest disadvantage is that is has few configurable options, and none that address your specific goal.

  • Why can't I restore the data from time machine?

    I have backup all my data on time machine, and i'm pretty sure while i checked the file of those backup, those older data should be stored properly. But while i enter time machine, trying to find the date i wanna restore but i can't. only left few latest dates to choose. Anyone encounter the same issue? Anyone can help?

    Section E in the first article.
    Time Machine Troubleshooting
    Time Machine Troubleshooting Problems

  • Why can't I delete old photos from my photo stream that were on my MBP (that I wiped and no longer own)?

    There are photos still around on my photostream from my macbook pro. I sold (and wiped clean) the computer months ago. The option to delete the photos is greyed out.  It's not a huge issue, but I have OCD about keeping my photostream cleaned up and there are a multitude of desktop wallpapers and other random things that I can't seem to get rid of. Any ideas? I unregistered my macbook pro when I sold it. Tried logging into icloud.com, iTunes, etc. and there was no photo options in sight.

    When the new iCloud Photo Library and its accompanying Photo app for Mac is available, this problem will go away. In the mean time, you have another option. Instead of syncing albums or photos from your photo library onto your device, why not create a shared Photo Stream with the older photos you want to have with you? Those can be deleted as you wish.
    Or, as Ralph suggested, if you are planning a trip, remove the excess photos before you leave so you do not run out of room.
    Cheers,
    GB

  • How do I delete all backups of Time Machine in OSX 10.7.2?

    I had some huge photo files (100gb) that were on my computer for a few weeks and have now been processed and deleted. I suspect that Time Machine backed them up on my external hard drive. How can I delete all backups from Time Machine and start with a fresh series of backups?
    Tks

    That would work also.
    I like to reformat the disk just to rebuild the directory when I clean one.
    Allan

Maybe you are looking for