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Delete the entire back up of my iMac to make space on my air port time capsule

Hi all. I have a 2 TB airport time capsule (via Time Machine) and originally had a single my iMac backing up to it. I have since added 2 laptops and the time capsule us quickly running out of storage. I plan on buying a large external hard drive and using that as my designated time machine back up for my iMac. I would like to continue to use the air port time capsule to back up my lap tops wirelessly.


My question is how do I delete the entire back up of the iMac from my air port time capsule to free up a large amount of storage? I can't seem to find a way to do this. I don't want to do it manually (file by file) but rather erase the entire back up of the iMac so that I have room to back up the laptops.

Posted on Nov 30, 2020 9:39 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 30, 2020 10:31 AM

We are not sure which operating system that you might have installed on your iMac, but will assume that it is one of the more recent versions.


Use the Finder on one of your Macs to delete the backup file for the iMac.


Click on the Finder (smiley face icon), probably located on your Mac at the far left at the bottom of the Mac's screen

On the next window that appears, look for a listing of Locations on the left side panel of the window. On older systems this is labeled Devices

Click on the name of your Name Capsule under the Locations heading and another window will appear to the right

If you have not done this before, you will see a Connect As button at the upper right corner of the window

Click on Connect As and you will be asked for your Time Capsule administrator password

When you enter the password to connect, a folder named "Data" will appear in the window unless you have renamed the Time Capsule hard drive

Double-Click on "Data" to open the Time Capsule hard drive and display the contents

The next window will display files associated with the name of each Mac that has been backing up

Click on the name of the iMac file to highlight it

Click the Gear icon at the top of the window

Click Move to Trash


There is no going back at this point, so make sure that you have selected the correct name of the Mac backup file to be deleted. The deletion process can take a few minutes up to 10-15 or more depending on how much data is stored in the backup


Wait for the process to complete and you are all set.

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3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 30, 2020 10:31 AM in response to gelwest

We are not sure which operating system that you might have installed on your iMac, but will assume that it is one of the more recent versions.


Use the Finder on one of your Macs to delete the backup file for the iMac.


Click on the Finder (smiley face icon), probably located on your Mac at the far left at the bottom of the Mac's screen

On the next window that appears, look for a listing of Locations on the left side panel of the window. On older systems this is labeled Devices

Click on the name of your Name Capsule under the Locations heading and another window will appear to the right

If you have not done this before, you will see a Connect As button at the upper right corner of the window

Click on Connect As and you will be asked for your Time Capsule administrator password

When you enter the password to connect, a folder named "Data" will appear in the window unless you have renamed the Time Capsule hard drive

Double-Click on "Data" to open the Time Capsule hard drive and display the contents

The next window will display files associated with the name of each Mac that has been backing up

Click on the name of the iMac file to highlight it

Click the Gear icon at the top of the window

Click Move to Trash


There is no going back at this point, so make sure that you have selected the correct name of the Mac backup file to be deleted. The deletion process can take a few minutes up to 10-15 or more depending on how much data is stored in the backup


Wait for the process to complete and you are all set.

Delete the entire back up of my iMac to make space on my air port time capsule

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