Can not delete time machine backups in my trash

[gnasher729]

Personally I think Time Machine is the most retarded thing ever. It'll just keep creating back ups until your external drive is full. There's no preference setting to have it only back up to X amount of data, or control how soon it deletes the back ups. It'd be nice if you could tell it to delete everything older than X amount of days, but you can't. Unless you're constantly working with data that you could potentially lose, it's pointless. The likelyhood that you're going to mess up your mac so bad that you're going to have to do a complete reformat of the drive is so slim that it's not worth giving up that much space on your external to turn time machine on. It's a scam to get you to buy Apple Time Capsule.

You so completely don't get what time machine is there for. It's a backup solution. Buy an external hard drive, turn on Time Machine, and forget it. This whole thread is amazing, lots of people trying to mess around with their backup system. That's about the one thing in the world that you don't want to mess around with, especially when you have just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

 

[picoscope]

I had luck solving this problem by logging in as root (commands are bolded):

[auralox]~ su

and then typing this in terminal:

[root@auralox]$ cd /Volumes/<name of your drive>/.Trashes

then you can do an

[root@auralox]$ ls -la

which will show you the name of the trash directory (in my case 501) which I then deleted using this command

rm -rf 501

which, like the finder 'Empty Trash' command, takes a while, but at least it doesn't screw up and hang forever. Plus, this has the added benefit of NOT having to reformat your drive

Sorry auralox, but I followed your directions exactly, while logged in as root, and got nothing but a bunch of "action not permitted" notices. As *root*?!? What gives?

 

[picoscope]

You so completely don't get what time machine is there for. It's a backup solution. Buy an external hard drive, turn on Time Machine, and forget it. This whole thread is amazing, lots of people trying to mess around with their backup system. That's about the one thing in the world that you don't want to mess around with, especially when you have just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

Except when it breaks, or just plain doesn't work correctly, which Time Machine does with unfortunate and alarming regularity.

p

 

[ccbrooks03]

Easy Solution

check out this web site...it worked well for me. i now have old time machine backups deleted:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071101005330768

 

[111jono111]

?

Sorry if this is me being stupid (I have the same problem as above, moved backup from ex-HD to trash (as it was taking ages) then got TM to backup again, and it was much faster/worked fine, but now I want to empty the incomplete backup from my trash and it takes ages. I haven't left it for that long but from what I have read that wouldn't make a difference if i did. I can't format my X HD+ I don't understand how that would help anyway as the file I want deleting is on the internal HD.) I don't quite understand the commands below eg?

I had luck solving this problem by logging in as root (commands are bolded): (what does logging in as root mean? Also commands are bolded?)

[auralox]~ su (what does auralox refer to? + any of these other symbols?)

and then typing this in terminal:

[root@auralox]$ cd /Volumes/<name of your drive>/.Trashes (I know what terminal is, but what does this mean? Do I type all of this into terminal?)

then you can do an

[root@auralox]$ ls -la (same again for this?)

which will show you the name of the trash directory (in my case 501) which I then deleted using this command

rm -rf 501 (and this?)

which, like the finder 'Empty Trash' command, takes a while, but at least it doesn't screw up and hang forever. Plus, this has the added benefit of NOT having to reformat your drive

(+this?)

 

[Applecoreone]

Sorry if this is me being stupid (I have the same problem as above, moved backup from ex-HD to trash (as it was taking ages) then got TM to backup again, and it was much faster/worked fine, but now I want to empty the incomplete backup from my trash and it takes ages. I haven't left it for that long but from what I have read that wouldn't make a difference if i did. I can't format my X HD+ I don't understand how that would help anyway as the file I want deleting is on the internal HD.) I don't quite understand the commands below eg?



(+this?)

I am going to attempt to put the Kabosh on this once and for all. The best way to use your Time Machine backup drive is to ONLY use it for Time Machine!

DON'T COPY ANYTHING ELSE TO THE DRIVE YOU DESIGNATE FOR TIME MACHINE!

That way if the drive or Time Machine errors....all you have to do is run disk utility and erase the drive. Then, re-run Time Machine and you are back in action.

It is almost impossible to throw away the backup folder and empty the trash due to Apples cataloging system for backing up. This is why you should not copy any other files to the Time Machine drive. In the end you will have to transfer your data out and erase the drive anyway.

Hope this helps.

 

[111jono111]

Thanks yes, i understand that it would be preferable to have a separate TM drive, if I had the money at the mo that is what I would do, however can you/anyone explain my queries in regards to the terminal commands to empty the trash? Thank you

 

[111jono111]

Issue resolved, firstly ejected X HD then emptied additional trash (not the backup), this worked fine, trash was empty, then turned X HD back on and the backup appeared in trash. Tried to empty as normal, with no luck, said that the item was locked, so then held down option key (alt) right clicked on the trash icon, selected empty trash and then let go of the option key. Took a short while but eventually emptied, everything seems to be running fine now, thanks for the help. As soon as I have the money Im going to get an additional X HD.

 

[Applecoreone]

I decided to move my not done backups from time machine to my trash to delete them. Since time machine hasnt been working. I now have them in my trash, yet i can not get rid of them however i try. Here is a screen shot of my trash and what happenes when i try to secure empty trash.

I would really like them gone, considering i now only had 50gb left on my hard drive, rather than 80 or so.



Thanks

Try reading before you post. The answers you seek are already here

 

[inthealps]

Might just be dumb luck...

I tried the option+Empty Trashcan option and nothing happened. So then tried the old, "restart the computer" trick and was able to Empty the Trashcan after that. I don't get it, I don't even care at this point, I'm just glad it worked. Dumb luck I guess.

 

[Benway]

@gnasher729

@gnasher729 ,
I am not a tech-head at all, but I have to say, I get what time machine is for, but I do not think it is very good at doing it. It is honestly like a big, hairy, ham-fisted caveman that bashes in big simple backups with it's meaty fists. It is "simple" yes, but simple without the sophistication or elegance of many other apple programs. It has no options or user settings on it at all. A completely impersonal backup. And it cocks-up even the simple backups. Particularly cocking-up the big ones for me right now. I am trying to backup 46gb. It is just NOT doing it. There is no option to perhaps try doing it in smaller batches either. So looks like I'm f***d with this, which is annoying because I will have to backup all the files manually on my other external hd.

I love my Macbook, but Time Machine is one of about 3 other things that REALLY ANNOY ME and irk me about the general parts of OS X, because I feel it is so poorly made / designed, from a basic idiot-user perspective. I think PCs really have it over Macs in the back-up program / utility game.

 

[Benway]

@ ArchieCrisis, Tiptoegirl , and Applecoreone

ArchieCrisis , your response worked for me!!

Tiptoegirl, yours sounded promising, and thank you Applecoreone for yours [though I suck with terminal]

This problem was really annoying for me!! Couldn't get rid of the damn incomplete backup thing for the life of me.

 

[onthefence]

I just sort of found another workaround. The command line approach didn't work. I got a bunch of errors when I attempted to delete the 501 folder.

Anyway, this is the GUI approach for the Terminal-intolerant.

1. You need to show hidden files. To do this download a script, for example, http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/15585/show\hide-files

2. Open your Time Machine drive in Finder and select the .Trashes folder.

If you notice, you can't see inside the .Trashes folder it's because you don't have permissions. So you have to grant privileges to your user.

Start by pressing "command+I" to open up the info dialogue. Click the triangle to expand the "Sharing & Permissions" section. Unlock the settings by pressing the little lock icon in the bottom right corner of the dialogue and typing in your password. Click the plus symbol and select your user and grant it "Read & Write" privileges. Finally, click the little gear symbol and choose "Apply to enclosed items."

Now you should be able to navigate inside your .Trashes folder.

3. Delete the pesky file. (Note: Now here's where I'm sure if it'll be the same for you and things get weirder)

In order for me to succeed in deleted the "Backups.backup" folder I had to navigate inside all the subfolders until I got to "InProgress" backup file which was the pesky possibly corrupted file. I had to delete that file, then empty trash. I repeated for each folder on my way back out of that folder structure. Delete, empty, delete, empty. (Also, I might have held option+delete to empty trash, although I don't think that should make a diff.)

4. Restore correct permissions to .Trashes folder. You probably want to undo the permissions you granted to yourself on the .Trashes folder. Although, I'm not sure how much less secure your system will be but then again it depends on what you put in your Trash bin!

Hope this works for you as this was very annoying. Good luck and happy computing!

 

[kalexigron]

Restart

I had the same problem.

My Time Machine backups happen on an external hard drive on which I also store movies, series, backups from my previous computer, etc. Because of this, I couldn't simply reset the external hard drive.

Because these backups from Time Machine were clogging my external hard drive, I decided to remove all but the most recent one. Once in my bin, I couldn't get it emptied and I couldn't put them back either.

I tried several suggestions on this thread, but the only one that worked was the most classic one: I just put off my computer, put it back on and emptied the bin.

Before I did this, I'd also tried the option + empty, but that didn't succeed. Maybe it had something to do with the end result, but I'm not sure.

 

[brookeb]

Is anyone still around from this thread?

I had the same problem.

My Time Machine backups happen on an external hard drive on which I also store movies, series, backups from my previous computer, etc. Because of this, I couldn't simply reset the external hard drive.

Because these backups from Time Machine were clogging my external hard drive, I decided to remove all but the most recent one. Once in my bin, I couldn't get it emptied and I couldn't put them back either.

I tried several suggestions on this thread, but the only one that worked was the most classic one: I just put off my computer, put it back on and emptied the bin.

Before I did this, I'd also tried the option + empty, but that didn't succeed. Maybe it had something to do with the end result, but I'm not sure.

kalexigron, nothing is working for me, so I'm wondering what you mean by "
I just put off my computer, put it back on and emptied the bin"
*Can you explain more in detail? Thanks so much!

 

[scraptag]

No Helping

Okay, so NOW I KNOW to not drag my back ups to the trash folder, however, nothing here is helping, and I'm running out of internet for info, and external hard drive space.

I was going to reformat my ehd and attempted to put all my lovely info on 2 other ehd's I have, but ran out of space. So that is not an option.

Holding the option key down and then clicking on the trash only gives me a -8003 error.

The other option I think was to go into utilites and play around with the trash. And they want you to know the name of your trash or something. I lose it when I have to name things. If you guys all didn't speak lingo, I might be able to follow along...I've even youtubed this and have not found out how to delete the backups off my ehd trash.
I hope someone can help me.