Mac – Can’t Delete Time Machine Backups, Can’t Move Them Out of Trash

backuptime-machinetrash

I think this is similar to this question, but I'm having a slightly different problem.

I've been using an external LaCie drive for my Time Machine and SuperDuper backups. But I was getting messages that the Time Machine drive was full, and the SuperDuper runs out of room.

I went into LaCie Backups.backupdb and grabbed a bunch of old Time Machine backups and dragged them into the trash.

Trash has been trying to delete them for over 24 hours with no end in sight. So I stopped it and tried to bring the files back in to Backups.backupdb, but it won't let me.

So I've got all these files I can't trash, but can't put back.

Any ideas?

Best Answer

So, as an answer, save any other data on another drive, then reformat and partition the drive.

You shouldn't be able to put any Time Machine files into the trash in the first place, so if that happened, you need to get anything you care about off that drive and erase it anyhow. If you don't need the backups - you can use Disk Utility to just erase the drive - that will empty your trash instantly as well as all the data on that drive.

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