Deleting Time Machine backups through Finder doesn't give back HD space

You should never mess with your Time Machine backups in the Finder. If you have, as it sounds like you did, you've probably damaged your backup.

I'm also curious why you are trying to free up space. Time Machine will try to fill the hard drive, and will then start deleting some of the oldest files from the backup as needed to clear space for new backups. Just leave TM alone and let it manage things. And don't try to use the backup drive for anything other than backup.

For more info about Time Machine, see the documents linked to at the top of this forum.

No idea at all what all of that meant.

Yes, it is a bit weird that I want to manage TM manually, but people do regularly delete backups manually

Not with Time Machine... you should not delete backups manually. Just let it do its job. See the last item on [Pondini's FAQ|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1964018].

I will be able to reformat in about a month, but until then I guess I have to deal with lost hard drive space?

If this lost space is on your Time Capsule, don't worry about it. Quit looking, leave the TC alone, and just let TM manage the space. You shouldn't be storing anything else there anyway, so it doesn't matter whether you've got empty space. The ultimate goal of TM is to not leave any empty space, taking up all the available space with backups.

Right, I do store other things on the partition I use for TM (it's not a Time Capsule). Perhaps that's a bad idea, so when I reformat, I will create a separate partition for TM exclusively.

Yes, that's definitely what you should do. You shouldn't try to share your backup volume with anything else... it's only job should be backups. However, one question... you mention "the partition I use for TM." Please, please, please tell me that you're not backing stuff up from one partition to another on the same physical drive!!! If that's what you're doing, you don't really have a backup. If your drive fails, it all disappears.

And go into TM and click the gear menu, you'll see the "Delete Backup" option, so I'm not doing anything stupid or crazy. I'm just confused because I thought deleting a backup would free up the space.

Just because the option is provided does not mean it should be used. The gear menu in the Finder will let you move your entire System folder to the trash. There certainly may be some good reasons to delete files from the backup, but just to free up space on the backup drive is not one of them. As to why you're not seeing that space freed up in the Finder, I have no idea.

MPOston wrote:
No, I have partitioned my external HD, so I am using one of those partitioned for TM among other things. And that was my question, why am I not getting back the space after deleting backups (which may not be good idea, but I've still done it)?

There is no problem deleting individual backups (or all backups of selected items), via Time Machine. You will get space back, but not usually as much as you may expect (see below).

But the one you did delete via the Finder may have corrupted your backups. Use +Disk Utility+ in your Applications/Utilities folder to do a +*Repair DIsk+* (not permissions) on it. That should make your backups usable, but may not recover much, if any, space.

You don't get back as much space as you expect because of the way TM's backups are structured.

When TM does a backup, it creates a folder for the new backup, and copies the new and changed items and makes "hard links" (sort of like fancy aliases) to the copied files. It also makes hard links to the previous backups of things that did not change. So after several backups, most of the backups of your files will have multiple hard links ("multi-links") to their backup copies, one for each backup run. Again, think of these as multiple aliases.

This is how TM's quick incremental backups are, in effect, full backups.

When you (or TM) delete a backup, all that's really deleted are the backup folder and all the hard links in that folder. Actual backup copies aren't deleted until the last hard link is deleted; so deleting what appears to be a full backup only deletes the copies of things that were deleted from your system long ago.

Because of these "multi-links," when you use the Finder to look at a backup folder, it counts the size of everything that was on your system when the backup was done, not just the items that were backed-up on that run.

So you are looking to gain space on the non- TM partition by removing files from the TM partition?

If that's the case, then you will not see any gains in available space on the second disk partition. Each partition has a STATIC value for size.

Each partition calculates file size separately.

MPOston wrote:
Ah okay, that makes sense. I don't really care that much about backups (fingers crossed) for the next month. Then I'll reformat and create a partition only for backups and another for usable files.

If you put important stuff on the other partition, you can get TM to back it up, but it will send you a warning reminding you that it's not a good idea to have both the originals and backups on the same physical drive: when it fails (and they all do, sooner or later), you risk losing both copies.

So you'll be much better protected if you find another way to back it up, such as archiving to CDs/DVDs.

I'll reformat and create a partition only for backups and another for usable files.

And where will those "usable files" be backed up to? To the other partition is bad, as Pondini and I have both pointed out. To nowhere is also bad, unless those files are expendable and you won't be upset if they are lost. IMHO, partitioning a backup drive is bad, unless it's to isolate individual TM backups for different machines. A backup drive should be just that - a backup drive - and should be used for nothing else.

You may want to read my [Mac Backup Guide|http://www.reedcorner.net/thomas/guides/backups> for more information on effective backups. I'd also direct you to Pondini's numerous and excellent Time Machine guides, some of which are linked to from the top of this forum.

Ok, for some reason i ended up with a similar problem. I am happy to delete all existing backups, but it is not clear how to reset or restart time machine.

Should i just reformat the external drive and let time machine begin again.

csessa wrote:
Ok, for some reason i ended up with a similar problem. I am happy to delete all existing backups, but it is not clear how to reset or restart time machine.

Should i just reformat the external drive and let time machine begin again.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.

That will work, but without knowing just what the problem is, we can't say whether it will actually help.

You might want to review these:

Time Machine Tutorial
Time Machine 101
How to back up and restore your files
Time Machine Features
Apple - Support - Mac OSX v10.5 Leopard Time Machine

and perhaps browse the Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.

If you have a problem setting-up or using Time Machine, start with the Time Machine - Troubleshooting *User Tip* at the top of this forum. It will show you how to locate the message(s) that describe the problem, then help you fix it.

If that doesn't help, post back with details, including all the messages, your setup (especially the destination for the backups), what you've done, and the results.