Deleting files from a back up drive

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Level 1

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Deleting files from a back up drive

I bought a new 16" MacBook Pro 2019 recently, running OS 10.15.5.

I had some files on a back up hard drive that I wanted to transfer to the new Mac. I connected the drive using a USB to Thunderbolt 3 adapter. I moved the files where I wanted them on the Mac. All of that worked just fine.

Then I wanted to delete the files from the back up drive, so I can use that drive for other things. I can't find a way to do that. When I select the drive in Finder, the "Move to trash" option is not there. I tried dragging and dropping the files into the trash bin, but that did not work. I didn't have this problem on my old Mac. Is there a trick to this that I'm missing?

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jun 5, 2020 11:24 PM

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Answer 1

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medwds

Level 4

2,092 points

Jun 6, 2020 1:43 AM in response to Ginty

[Edit: Oops, sorry Malcolm! We were writing at the same time!]

It's possible the drive has a Windows filesystem. Most external hard drives are supplied this way. To check, right-click it and choose Get Info—the format will be NTFS. macOS can read but not modify NTFS volumes, which is why you can't do Move To Trash.

If you were able to modify or delete files on this drive using a previous Mac, you likely had something like Microsoft NTFS for Mac by Paragon installed on that Mac.

If you plan to only use this drive with Macs from now on, I'd recommend you use Disk Utility to erase and reformat it as Apple File System (APFS) or Mac OS Extended. But first you'll need to copy the files you want to keep to somewhere else temporarily.

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Answer 2

Jun 6, 2020 12:53 AM in response to Ginty

If you just want to delete some files:

Delete a file from your Time Machine backup disk - Apple Support

If you want to delete everything, use Disk Utility (Utilities folder in Applications folder).

Set View (Top-Left of Disk Utility window) to "Show All Devices", select the drive, all the way at the left, not a volume indented below it, and click the Erase button.

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Answer 3

Ginty Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 6, 2020 1:22 AM in response to Malcolm J. Rayfield

It's not a Time Machine back up. Sorry, I probably shouldn't have called it a "back up" drive. It's an external hard drive that I used to move some files from the old computer to the new one. And I don't want to erase the whole thing, just the files that I transferred. On the old computer, I could just "Move to trash" like you would do with any other file in Finder, but on this computer, it's not giving me that option for the files on the external drive.

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Answer 4

Jun 6, 2020 1:31 AM in response to Ginty

Maybe the drive is formatted NTFS and the old Mac had some NTFS software installed. The new Mac would be able to read the drive, but not write or delete files. What does Disk Utility show for the drive, and any volumes on it?

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Deleting files from a back up drive

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