Delete volume, folder or file from Time Machine backup

However inconvenient, I've considered that as my only option.

As a Level 10 member I have no doubts that you're right.

Thanks for your reply.

"No longer able to delete files ..." Dear Apple, this is not a very nice direction to take macOS. 😂

Well, ones need's do not automatically apply to others. I need to delete, that's just it. This time I want to save 200GB of space on my backup unit, the other time I needed to delete a confidential document that ended up in the backups by mistake.

And I'm going to correct you although being lower in level: It has always been a great idea to be able to remove files you do not longer wish to keep. Remember: Computers work for us, not the other way around. With older versions of macOS, there was a fully implemented and supported way to do this.

Come on, Time Machine isn't 20+ years old 😉

Still, thank you for responding.

P. Phillips, I'm curious as why you say this? You've always been able to delete from the Time Machine backups using terminal commands that updated both the Time Machine volume / files AND the Time Machine database. I'm just curious how this changed into Big Sur.

Thanks.

Does anyone else know how to solve this?

What about editing the backup database itself? There just has to be someone that has edited the TimeMachine database to solve bugs or errors like this.

What about some trick to exclude every backup that is older than a certain date? Not just deleting older backups but to exclude any backups, within until the latest one, that originated before a certain date ..?

Any TimeMachine experts in the forum?

Hi Barney.

In my latest backup as of an hour ago, there is a volume included in it called "INSTALL 1" (besides other volumes also included in the backup). But, there is no such volume ("INSTALL 1") present in my system. Why does it end up in my backups, that is my main question. That volume contains files of up to 200GB.

If there would be no TimeMachine database to look into, where would TimeMachine even find this volume? There's no such volume present. No, of course there's at database of some sort that is in need of some manual manipulation to fix this.

Okay, so the problem might be the snapshot system instead of TimeMachine. Does anyone know how to access the inner settings of the snapshot system? I've tried erasing all local snapshots, still this ghost volume shows up in my recent backup.

Yes, I had an external drive by about that name (but not exactly) connected earlier this year that happened to be backuped. Usually external drives won't be backuped by default, but this one was. I don't have that drive anymore and that data needs to be deleted from my backups. It doesn't belong to me.

Yes, I want to store other data, like more backups, on that space rather than keeping the data that shouldn't be there. 200GB is 10% of my backup drive = too valuable to just waste and way to interesting a question (to me at least) than just to accept that it isn't possible . Of course it is, I just need to dig deep enough to find the right answer. :)

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I sure do want to get my space back.

I want to delete a certain volume from the backups. How is that not an urge to get free space back? And I also want to get rid of this certain data from my backups as it doesn't belong to me.

I seem to have found multiple databases containing information about TimeMachine. I'm trying to figure out how they are formated.

Actually, I DO want the space back — I just don't agree with you when I hear that erasing everything is the only way of getting rid of the specific data I want to delete. That is, I firmly believe that there's a nuance missing here.

I get it that this might not be at all important to you to solve. To me though it is something that I would like to learn. I'm interested in things like this. I mean ...

Q: I want to delete a file.

A: Delete the whole disk.

Are you not at all bothered with an answer like that? You're a level 10 member. Why don't we try to solve this together but in a less brutal way?