time machine backup is full

hello, first let me start off by saying i am tech challenged. i've been following steps online to clean up my time machine. via finder, i moved the majority of files to the trash. i have been trying to empty the trash for over an hour now. no success. i have a late 2012 iMac with 3 TB storage, and this external hard drive that is now full. how do i clear the trash, or how can i erase all content on the external drive and reformat it. unfortunately i really need step by step guidance ( old and tech challenged! forgot to mention the old part! ) i believe the external hard drive is a seagate.

currently my computer was showing 285,000 and now it says it cannot complete the deletion.


would anybody be able to assist. thank you


Earlier displays & monitors

Posted on Nov 11, 2023 1:57 PM

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Posted on Nov 11, 2023 2:13 PM

You have almost for sure made a mess of your Time Machine Drive. The best thing to do is format it and start over. If the drive is 5 years old or older I d recommend replacing the External Hard Disk . They wear out over time and 5 years is about average for replacing.

13 replies

Nov 12, 2023 7:52 PM in response to BDAqua

Backups are easy to do. I do it three ways. I use TM to an external drive, at 10 pm nightly (TM editor). I also use Carbon Copy Cloner weekly to a different external drive. Lastly I keep sensitive stuff in an encrypted sparse bundle (plus a copy). Weekly I copy the two sparse bundles to a thumb drive. I am lucky I haven't yet had a HD failure, however I have had to recover files I messed up. TM is the easiest for recovery.

Nov 13, 2023 6:19 AM in response to DesertRatR

That’s an impressive backup system you have !

I tried to follow instruction online to backup only once per day but perhaps because my iMac is from late 2012 , it doesn’t support the latest updates and I cannot seem to edit how Time Machine backs things up. It appears it’s every 15 mins or every hour.

I probably need a backup once a day only


the most important things I don’t want to lose are my photos and videos which take up most of the memory


and I’m the end I don’t even think you can get photos back from Time Machine - well at least that is what the people at apple told me


Nov 13, 2023 6:42 AM in response to writetogiovanna

TM backups are mostly links pointing to the last unchanged files, like...


Full Backup


Take one new picture...


New picture + pointers to each unchanged file in the full Backup...


Next make a new Pages Document...


New Pages Document + pointer to New pic + pointers to each unchanged file in the full Backup...


A simplified attempt at explaining why not to delete in the finder... only TM is aware of the complicated structure of the backups. :)

time machine backup is full

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