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How do I quickly delete time machine backups

My Time Machine backup tells me it is too full to do further backups. I thought it was meant to delete old files automatically, but presumably that's not happening. I'd be happy to delete most — even all — backups and start over, but deleting through Time Machine is too slow to be practical. An option would be to reformat the entire Time Machine partition, if possible. Can I do that without reformating other partitions on the same (external) drive?

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Aug 28, 2019 4:31 PM

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13 replies

Sep 1, 2019 11:29 AM in response to Barney-15E

Maybe so. I find Time Machine a bit opaque.

By the way it was your suggestion of possible drive failure that set me on the way to the fix. Instead of drive failure, I thought perhaps file corruption. I tried First Aid but it told me I couldn't repair corrupt files unless I started in recovery mode. Not sure if it ever found dodgy files — my guess is it did — but at any rate it completed its process successfully.

How do I quickly delete time machine backups

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