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Level 1

0 points

How do you delete a Time Machine created backup directory?

I installed OS 10.5 as an upgrade. After a day, I decided to reinstall with the archive and install option. However, I had already backed up my system with Time Machine. So I have this directory on my second hard disk:

drwxr-xrwx+ 3 root myusername 102 Oct 29 19:31 Backups.backupdb

I noticed the + and removed the ACL with sudo. However, I still cannot remove the folder with: sudo rm -rf Backups.backupdb. I get "operation not permitted" on all attempts. Dragging the folder to the trash yield similar results. *What is the Terminal (bash) way to delete this folder?*

Also, I noticed all sub-directories have an @ symbol, like this:

0 drwxr-xr-x@ 12 root myusername 408 Oct 30 15:59 mycomputer

*What does the @ mean?*

Power Mac G5, Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Nov 1, 2007 6:19 PM

16 replies

jrg_uk

Level 3

720 points

Dec 3, 2007 5:31 AM in response to cwolf

Your point about use of 'rm' is a very good one. It's safe to delete a file (and doing so will delete it in every version where that directory is identical) but deleting entire sub-directory structures may remove them from every backup.

It's a very strange decision, that Apple made, to link directories as well as files. It would have been far safer to make a complete directory structure each time, and then only link files into it (though obviously that means additional storage requirements, to hold all those extra directories.)

How do you delete a Time Machine created backup directory?

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