Time Machine Back ups - how do I delete them?

[michael8765]

In an effort to open up some space on my external hard drive I made the mistake of moving several Time Machine backups to my Trash (on a 2023 MacBook Pro)- now I can't empty my Trash to get rid of them - I'd really appreciate hearing from someone with experience performing this task successfully.

 

[clee01l]

Have you tried opening the Trash folder in finder and deleting (immediately) the "backups.backupdb" folder ?

Apple places restrictions on folders that contain TimeMachine Backups

 

[Johan Elzenga]

It’s not a good idea to use the Time Machine backup disk for anything else than those backups. Time Machine changes the permissions of its disk, so that other apps have no access to it.

 

[michael8765]

Have you tried opening the Trash folder in finder and deleting (immediately) the "backups.backupdb" folder ?

Apple places restrictions on folders that contain TimeMachine Backups

thanks - I'll give that a try

 

[michael8765]

It’s not a good idea to use the Time Machine backup disk for anything else than those backups. Time Machine changes the permissions of its disk, so that other apps have no access to it.

Thanks - point taken - so can you tell me how to delete back ups in my Trash? or from the disk I have them on presently?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Deleting backups should be done from within Time Machine, not by dragging them in the trash.

 

[clee01l]

Deleting backups should be done from within Time Machine, not by dragging them in the trash.

If the backup file is in the .Trash Folder, it may not be available to TimeMachine.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Johan Elzenga]

If possible, he should drag it out of the trash and put it back where it belongs. Time Machine backups are complicated, filled with hard links. If you look inside one particular backup folder, it seems that backup folder contains a full backup of all the files on your computer. It does not, however. A lot of the ‘files’ you see in that backup are just links, and that is why you should not try to delete a backup folder to make room. Time Machine has ways to remove things from the backup properly. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250

 

[michael8765]

Thanks to those that offered advice and support - as it turned out upgrading my Mac OS to version 14 allowed me to delete them instantly - thanks again for your help.