Mac – Can’t delete old Time Machine backups from Trash

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I was trying to delete some old Time Machine backups from my backup drive. I am running into a few issues.

  1. I tried the method outlined in this article of simply moving them to the trash. After I moved old backup folders to the trash, I tried deleting them from the trash, but got the following error:

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  1. I clicked "Get Info" and tried to set permissions for everyone from "Read Only" to "Read and Write." However, when trying to delete the folders I get the same issue.

  2. I tried writing rm -rf '/Volumes/MacBook Pro Backup/.Trashes/501/2020-07-03-051423' in the terminal, but I get permission denied issues for all files in the folder. I am afraid to use sudo in front of the command in case this is not the correct way to delete the backups.

  3. I tried finding the "Put back" option when right clicking the backup folder to put the backups back into the original location, but the option was not there.

  4. I tried dragging and dropping the folders from the trash to the original backup location, but I get the following error:

enter image description here

Is there any way I can restore the old backups or remove them completely, without having to format my TM drive?

Best Answer

I fixed this by using tmutil delete.

First, I changed directory into where all the trashed backups were being kept:

cd /Volumes/MacBook\ Pro\ Backup/.Trashes/501

Then, I checked all the files in the directory to make sure I knew what I was deleting. This showed me a list of folders named by date:

sudo ls

Afterwards, I was able to use tmutil delete to delete all the backups:

sudo tmutil delete *

From now on, whenever I want to delete old backups, I will use tmutil delete on the backup folder.

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