Moved Time Machine Folders to Trash via Finder. Now realize that was BAD!

Well you have learned a lesson. The problem has no real resolution. You will need to let the Trash empty which will take quite some time. After that erase your backup drive and restart your TM backups.

In the future know that a TM backup drive needs to be at least twice as large as the drive you are backing up to avoid disk full problems. If your backup drive isn't large enough then get a larger drive to avoid future problems. Also, see User Tips for Time Machine for help with TM problems. Also you can select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine" to locate articles on how to use TM. See also Mac 101- Time Machine.

Hi, and welcome to the forums.

The easiest thing to do is simply erase your TM drive, with Disk Utility.

Or, you should be able to force-empty the trash, but it will take a while:

Open the Terminal app (in your Applications/Utilities folder). Be *very careful* with this app. It's a direct link into UNIX, the underpinnings of OSX, but without the protections of OSX.

In Terminal, the prompt looks like this: user-xxxxxx:~ <your name>$

(where <your name> is your short user name). It's followed by a non-blinking block cursor.

Type the following exactly as shown, placing the name of your Time Machine partition between the quotes, and be sure to place spaces where shown:

cd /Volumes/"Time Machine Backups"/

and press Return. The prompt should then change to include the name of your Time Machine drive. Then copy or type:

sudo rm -rf .Trashes

and press Return. It should then ask for your Admin password (which won't be displayed). Press Return.

If there were many items involved, this may take quite a long time. Unless there are problems, once the deletion is complete, you'll see another prompt (there's no completion message).

Then repair your backups, per #A5 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), to be sure they weren't corrupted.

Should you ever want or need to delete things from your backups, see #12 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).

okay i unfortunately did the same thing... i except i went a bit frther an clicked empty trash now my trash is emtying with all the backup files in it ... except the .efi and bootX files which is said it is locked.

I am slightly confused .. what do i do next to make sure everything is okay with my time capsule. I also did the same with some other files that were on it .. and the space available has not changed. what do i do ? 😟

Cancel emptying the trash if you can.

Copy whatever you need from the TC somewhere else temporarily, and erase it via +*Airport Utility.+* Select +*Base Station > Manual Set-Up+* from the Menubar, then Disks in the tool Bar, then Erase.

Had the same problem. Like a dumb-*** I thought, I know, I won't partition my drive for the time-machine backup, that way I can regulate the amount of space its taking up because if I need more space for something or when the drive starts getting full I'll trash the back-ups.

BAD IDEA!!! After doing some reading I now know you must trash backups from inside the time machine interface.

I first tried to delete, it ounted up to about 3,400 files then started counting files at about 1 per minute. So I quickly ended that.

Next I tried a secure delete. It at least finished counting the files (took about an hour). But, it couldn't delete any of the because I didn't have sufficent privelages.

I seriously, CAN NOT COUNT the amount of times that the underlying cause of a problem I've had with OSX was related to priv's. Yeah that's right I'm calling them privs, that's how common they are, they've got a nickname. Should just call em p's.

Anyway suffice to say, I've had p experience. I checked out the trash and sure enough each one of the back-up folders was both locked and only had write permissions for the system.
With fingers crossed I ran disk util, with nothing in the .trashes showing up. Checked out the trash, and surprise surprise.... nothing had changed.

So... urrghhh. This was annoying. I got info on each one of the folders, unlocked it (which requires typing your password each time) added an admin into the permission list and set it to read and write.

Again I tried regular "empty trash" it got to about 3,300 and started the slow count again, so thought I'd try the terminal recursive delete "sudo rm -rf .Trashes" and now it looks like progress!

Its taking its sweet *** time, but its gettin there. It can't empty a few other small bits and pieces due to some more p issues, but once it gets what it can done, there should be a WHOLE lot less files and I'll just do an apply p's to enclosed items.