Time Machine mirrored by Trash folder

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Level 1

22 points

Time Machine mirrored by Trash folder

I am stumped. My wife has an old iMac, 2013 running Catalina. She couldn't empty the trash so I looked at it. The trash was full of Time Machine backups which I could not delete due to permissions. However when I simply ejected the Time Machine external hard drive the trash folder was empty within a minute. When I plug the TM disk back in the backups appear in the Trash folder again. Initially I just thought these were old TM backups because she didn't check the option to delete the trash after 30 days....but that's not the case. I even had an old TM machine hard drive of hers that I switched with the current one...and those backups also appeared in the trash folder. Never seen anything like this before. HELP!!

iMac 27″, macOS 15.1

Posted on Dec 17, 2024 3:45 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

den.thed

Level 10

83,164 points

Dec 17, 2024 4:32 PM in response to davidra

Time Machine backups should never manually be moved to the trash. The only option now, is to completely Erase the Time Machine backup drive and start new Time Machine backups.

FWIW the Time Machine backups are protected in later macOS versions, so that they can not be altered or moved to the trash.

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Answer 2

PRP_53

Level 10

92,425 points

Dec 18, 2024 1:42 AM in response to davidra

This all looks absolutely right

You can delete files from an External Drive and place them in the Trash

You can eject the drive and the Trash will appear as empty

You can reattach the same drive again and Presto - the Trash is full again

All normal behaviours

You see, the files in the Trash are Still ON the External Drive awaiting for user to Empty the Trash

In this specific case, I am 100% with the assessment of @den.thed

Cherry picked Time Machine Backup Snapshot to delete ?

Not a good idea as this may even corrupt the index files TM Backup uses

In so doing, ALL the TM Backup Snapshot maybe compromised to the extent All will be lost

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