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seneca2008

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 29, 2008
4
0
I used an external drive to create backups using time machine. I then bought time capsule and carried out a full back up of my ibook. I have tried to delete the old backup on my external drive but I get an error message saying "the operation cannot be completed because the item ByHost is in use".

Can anyone please help me?

Thanks
 
I realize that this may be annoying, but how about just erasing the external drive with Disk Utility? That presumes you have nothing else on there...
 
Thanks for your replies.

No I cant erase the external disc its full of stuff I need.

Yes time machine is off. I have a time capsule now and the backups happen there.

I had been trying to delete the folder through my wireless steup using time capsule but that clearly is not working.

I have tried to plug the external drive into my mac directly and that looks more promising.
 
While in Time Machine, click the file or folder you want to delete. Press the action button (the one that looks like a gear) and an option will come up that says "delete all backups of (your file/folder)" Click that. It will erase all the versions of that file/folder that it has, except the newest one, which you can just delete normally. Hope this helps
 
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