Cleaning up my Backupsbackupdb disk partition

Question

Cleaning up my Backupsbackupdb disk partition

Hi, folks,

After getting a message that my "Backupsbackupdb" disk partition (used for my Time Machine) is short on space I opened it on my Desktop and trashed hundreds of folders, from 2022, till the end of 2023.

Then, when trying to empty the Trash (to gain disk space again) thousands of files were deleted, but I also got tons of messages like I'm showing below. I clicked "continue" and it took quite a while till it was all done. I gained lots of disk space, indeed. Good.

BUT I STILL HAVE LOTS OF "STUFF" IN MY TRASH FOLDER, EMPTY FOLDERS, AND SOME THAT CONTAIN CACHE FOLDERS (THOUGH EMPTY TOO), WHICH STILL REFUSE TO BE DELETED.

I also noticed that when opening some InDesign documents on my iMac, they "forget" to load the used fonts, even though those fonts are available, and I need to make them unavailable and then available again, to have InDesign recognize them again... So I can only suspect that I was deleting the CACHES of those documents?... Do those Caches reside in my BACKUP disk???

And the big question is, do I live from now on with all those hundreds of empty folders in my Trash folder?

(I'm with my old "late 2012" iMac, still using High Sierra 10.13.6, if it matters.)

THANKS, SO MUCH!

iMac 27″

Posted on Apr 29, 2024 5:44 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 30, 2024 10:52 AM in response to amifromskokie

Thanks, guys, I appreciate it. Yes, I now remember that Time Machine erases old stuff to make space for new, which, of course, makes sense, and I acted stupidly...

I'm now using Disk Utility erasing that partition in my external hard drive.

Still, just curious, why it seems like the stupid thing that I did caused some documents to "forget" their caches...

And I assume that once that partition is all erased, that I would be able to finally empty the trash? Or maybe erasing it gets rid of the junk in my trash by itself...

THANKS AGAIN!

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Answer 2

den.thed

Level 9

77,548 points

Apr 29, 2024 6:59 PM in response to amifromskokie

Time Machine backups should never ever be manually delete or move to the trash.

The fix for that now, is to completely Erase the Time Machine backup drive and start over.

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Answer 3

rkaufmann87

Level 10

140,970 points

Apr 29, 2024 10:00 PM in response to amifromskokie

den.thed is correct, NEVER EVER mess with Time Machine in Finder. Time Machine automatically erases the oldest backups to make space. Trying to manually remove Time Machine backups from its External Hard Disk only makes a mess that cannot be recovered. In your case, simply start over with Time Machine meaning re-format it in Disk Utilities and re-set it up.

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