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Battery Died While Using Time Machine/Lost GB

M

macgirl89

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 4, 2009
86
0
New York, USA
I was doing my first-ever Time Machine back-up tonight. I have about 130GB of data. About a half hour into it, my battery died and when I rebooted the computer from sleep mode, Time Machine said that the back-up had failed. I deleted the initial back-up in the 'Time Machine Back-Ups' folder, but it still says that I have 40GB less on my external hard drive than I actually do. My external hard drive is 300GB, so I should have 170GB left, but I only have 130GB.

How do I get those GB back?! :confused:

PLEASE HELP!
 
I tried emptying it, but it says something like "Preparing to Empty Trash..." with just 1 item. And it doesn't do anything. I think it's too many files for it to handle...

I also got a message that said: Emptying the Trash cannot be completed because "boot.efi" is locked. To empty everything in the Trash, including locked items, press the Option key while selecting Empty Trash.

Anyone know what this means? I don't want to delete/unlock "boot.efi" if it's something important.
 
macgirl89 said:
I tried emptying it, but it says something like "Preparing to Empty Trash..." with just 1 item. And it doesn't do anything. I think it's too many files for it to handle...
Click to expand...

I had a similar problem a few days ago. My backup became too large and there was not enough space on my external hard drive (It's a 320GB and I have 141GB of movies on there, as well), and TimeMachine canceled the backup. So I wanted to free up the entire drive, so I could use it for just movies (I bought a TB drive a day ago), and when it came time to empty the trash, it did say "Preparing to empty 1 item" for quite some time. By the time I called Apple Support about it, it began to delete.

So just let it sit, and it will empty it. It just takes a long time since there are so many files to the backup.
 
ideal.dreams said:
I had a similar problem a few days ago. My backup became too large and there was not enough space on my external hard drive (It's a 320GB and I have 141GB of movies on there, as well), and TimeMachine canceled the backup. So I wanted to free up the entire drive, so I could use it for just movies (I bought a TB drive a day ago), and when it came time to empty the trash, it did say "Preparing to empty 1 item" for quite some time. By the time I called Apple Support about it, it began to delete.

So just let it sit, and it will empty it. It just takes a long time since there are so many files to the backup.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I did wait for it for a while, and it did start to delete, but now I have run into another problem. I edited my post above. I get a message that says: Emptying the Trash cannot be completed because "boot.efi" is locked. To empty everything in the Trash, including locked items, press the Option key while selecting Empty Trash.

I don't know if it would mess up my Mac to delete the "boot.efi" file.
 
macgirl89 said:
Yeah, I did wait for it for a while, and it did start to delete, but now I have run into another problem. I edited my post above. I get a message that says: Emptying the Trash cannot be completed because "boot.efi" is locked. To empty everything in the Trash, including locked items, press the Option key while selecting Empty Trash.

I don't know if it would mess up my Mac to delete the "boot.efi" file.
Click to expand...

Based on the information I've pulled up from Google, boot.efi is stored in /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi.

It seems to me like TimeMachine backed up these files, and Mac OS X is putting a red flag on this file, as it may not know it is a copy. Maybe try to find this file in the trash, and place it on your desktop for the time being.
 
ideal.dreams said:
Based on the information I've pulled up from Google, boot.efi is stored in /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi.

It seems to me like TimeMachine backed up these files, and Mac OS X is putting a red flag on this file, as it may not know it is a copy. Maybe try to find this file in the trash, and place it on your desktop for the time being.
Click to expand...

It worked!! I've got my 170GB back! Thanks!! :D
 
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