Q: Trash won't empty deleted time machine backups
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Aug 21, 2013 1:59 AMby Pondini,katiecat wrote:
Katies-MacBook-Pro:~ katie$ cd /Volumes/"Time Machine Backups"/
-bash: cd: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/: No such file or directory
If Linc's suggestion doesn't work . . .
Did you type that, or drag your TM drive into the Terminal window? It looks like you may have mis-typed it. Since the "cd" failed, the "rm" command was trying to empty the trash on your startup drive.
Typing "cd" and a space, then dragging it from a Finder window should generate the correct path.
Is there anything else on the drive, besides these backups in the trash? If not, just erase it with Disk Utility.
They are taking up about 1GB on my drive and it's more annoying than anything but if it happens again I want to know how to solve it.
Are you planning to continue backing-up to this drive? If so, and if there's other stuff on it, in the same partition, that's not a good idea. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #3 for details.
If you deleted them to regain space, once the backups are in their own partition, TM will delete old backups automatically, when necessary. In a pinch, if you need to delete them, while Apple says it's supported via the Finder effective with Lion, you can also do it via the TM browser. See #12 in the above link.
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Nov 3, 2013 11:50 AMby smo0f,I had the same issue while trying to manually remove a Time Machine folder. I was looking in my home folder trashes expecting it to be there but it wasn't (~/.Trash/). But what I did (and you should do) is open the Trash, and right click the folder you want to delete, and click Get Info. Under the General section, you should see where the folder is located next to "Where:". Mine was something like "/Volumes/External_Disk/.Trashes/501". That's the folder I deleted in the Terminal using "sudo rm -rf /Volumes/External_Disk/.Trashes/501".
If you still get a message about it being locked and unable to delete it, then you need to run "sudo chflags -R nouchg /Volmes/External_Disk/.Trashes/501" or whatever the folder is you're trying to delete, then rerun the rm -rf command.
Hope this helps. Good luck.
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Feb 2, 2014 10:56 PMby Old Load Toad,Pondini wrote:
katiecat wrote:
Katies-MacBook-Pro:~ katie$ cd /Volumes/"Time Machine Backups"/
-bash: cd: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/: No such file or directory
If Linc's suggestion doesn't work . . .
Did you type that, or drag your TM drive into the Terminal window? It looks like you may have mis-typed it. Since the "cd" failed, the "rm" command was trying to empty the trash on your startup drive.
Typing "cd" and a space, then dragging it from a Finder window should generate the correct path.
Is there anything else on the drive, besides these backups in the trash? If not, just erase it with Disk Utility.
They are taking up about 1GB on my drive and it's more annoying than anything but if it happens again I want to know how to solve it.
Are you planning to continue backing-up to this drive? If so, and if there's other stuff on it, in the same partition, that's not a good idea. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #3 for details.
If you deleted them to regain space, once the backups are in their own partition, TM will delete old backups automatically, when necessary. In a pinch, if you need to delete them, while Apple says it's supported via the Finder effective with Lion, you can also do it via the TM browser. See #12 in the above link.
Worked like a charm...had a hard time using the terminal and your drag and drop of the dirve after "cd" sloved it! The Option key hold down did not work and it took almost an hour to clear the trash through the terminal looked like this when all good:
justinflinsimac:~ justinfranklin$ cd /Volumes/Time\ Machine\ Backups
justinflinsimac:Time Machine Backups justinfranklin$ ls -a
. KD Tech Web.muse
.. MY BOOK BACK UP
.DS_Store MY BOOK BACK UP 2 Nov 2013
.DocumentRevisions-V100 Mom
.Spotlight-V100 PAID BILLS
.TemporaryItems Scanned in old photos
.Trashes computer stuff
.VolumeIcon.icns iMovie Events.localized
.apdisk iMovie Library.imovielibrary
.com.apple.timemachine.donotpresent iMovie Original Movies.localized
.disk_label iMovie Projects.localized
.disk_label_2x iPhoto Library
.fseventsd iPhoto Library Recovered Photos
03 Desert Rose.m4a iPhoto Library Recovered Photos_2
Backups.backupdb iPhoto Library Recovered Photos_3
Camera Uploads iPhoto Library Recovered Photos_4
Financial Accounting iTunes Music
GI BILL tmbootpicker.efi
HOUSE MANITOWOC
justinflinsimac:Time Machine Backups justinfranklin$ sudo rm -rf .Trashes
Password:
Then just wait while it works...you will see the files disappear if you open trash---may take a while to get rid of them all if you did like I and had 15 backups in there! -
Feb 10, 2014 3:51 PMby mcdowesj,smo0f wrote:
Mine was something like "/Volumes/External_Disk/.Trashes/501". That's the folder I deleted in the Terminal using "sudo rm -rf /Volumes/External_Disk/.Trashes/501".
If you still get a message about it being locked and unable to delete it, then you need to run "sudo chflags -R nouchg /Volmes/External_Disk/.Trashes/501" or whatever the folder is you're trying to delete, then rerun the rm -rf command.
Hope this helps. Good luck.
Perfect, really helped me out!
