Mac – How to delete Time Machine backups, moved into trash

backupfilesystemfindertime-machinetrash

I was going to delete the Time Machine backups. I made a mistake and instead of deleting them using Time Machine, I just moved the Backups.backupdb folder to the trash. Now, if I try to empty the trash, Finder attempts to count the number of files that will be deleted, and this process is incredibly time-consuming, because the Finder tries to count each file in each backup. The same thing happens if I try to move the Backups.backupdb folder from the trash back on my hard drive where it was before.

What can I do in this situation? How can I delete the backups?

Best Answer

To remove or move the Backups.backupdb folder open Terminal.app.

  • Enter cd /Volumes/<Name_of_BackupDrive>/.Trashes to change the working directory. <Name_of_BackupDrive> has to be the volume name of your TM backup volume.

  • Enter sudo ls -laO to show all folders. Usually you should see only one folder with the name 501 now:

    d-wx-wx-wt@ 3 root      wheel  hidden 102 Jun 25 20:52 .
drwxrwxr-x  9 root      admin  -      374 Jun 26 01:21 ..
drwx------@ 2 user      staff  hidden  68 Jun 26 01:21 501
  • Enter sudo su to get super user rights.

  • Enter cd 501 (Replace 501 with whatever the name of the directory is) to change the working directory and list the content of the folder 501 with ls -laO. Now you should see the folder Backups.backupdb:

    drwx------@ 3 user      staff  hidden 102 Jun 26 01:21 .
d-wx-wx-wt@ 3 root      wheel  hidden 102 Jun 25 20:52 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 user      admin  -       68 Jun 26 01:19 Backups.backupdb

  • Now you may either move the folder back to the root of the backup drive with: 

    mv Backups.backupdb /Volumes/<Name_of_BackupDrive>/

    or remove the folder with 

    rm -dR Backups.backupdb

    If you are asked to override something (e.g. override rw-r--r-- root/wheel uchg for Backups.backupdb/.RecoverySets/0/com.apple.recovery.boot/boot.efi?) enter yes and hit the return button. You may also add the -f option to skip confirmations.

To delete a 30 GB backup in a virtual machine it took about 3 minutes. So depending on the size of Backups.backupdb some patience is needed.

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