Two of my laptops are dead, nonfunctional, surplus.
Together, the laptops have stored 1.8 GB of data on the Time Machine drive. I do not need this data.
I have access to Time Machine via my desktop / Catalina.
How do I free up space on the Time Machine drive by deleting these backup images, without the ability to boot up the laptops?
Previous experience has taught me to be afraid of deleting datasets on this volume using Finder.
Time Capsule
Why not just erase the partition that has the TM backup/s, and keep the rest?
I am not sure, but assuming you have another Mac, plug in the drive, open disk utility and click on the parent volume, then in the top of the disk utility window, click erase. I assume there is nothing on the drive you need to keep. This would wipe it completely.
No, there is much on the volume I want to keep: namely, the backup set for the remaining alive devices.
I suppose I could wipe the volume and start over, if there is no solution for the dead devices. That would result in undesirable loss of data.
srlawton wrote:
Together, the laptops have stored 1.8 GB of data on the Time Machine drive. I do not need this data.
1.8 GB is hardly enough to mess with.
They're all in the same partition.
Removing Time Machine backups of dead devices
