TO DELETE TIME MACHINE BACKUP

Pondini,

I have turned off TM and started and rebooted the drive, as well as the computer several times. I would copy my other information and just erase the drive but all I can see are my folders and not my files, hence I cannot copy them. I have tried to verify and repair the drive but it "Couldn't be unmounted"

I have run the lsof command for the Drive in Question in Terminal and get the following...

Finder 529 ....... 23r DIR 14,7 170 122784 /Volumes/Barn/Backup.backupdb

I have used the killall command to stop Finder but it just repeats again with a diferent PID.

This appears to be the only process engaging the drive. how do I permanently kill either Finder or this Backup.backupdb so I can release the drive?

Many thanks for your time.

FrannyP wrote:

. . .

I would copy my other information and just erase the drive but all I can see are my folders and not my files, hence I cannot copy them.

Do the folders have a red "badge" indicating you're not authorized to read them?

This appears to be the only process engaging the drive. how do I permanently kill either Finder or this Backup.backupdb so I can release the drive?

Start from your OSX Install Disc (Leopard or Snow Leopard) or Recovery HD (Lion), per the yellow box in #6 of Using Disk Utility.

Then run Repair Disk:

If you're on Lion, you must run that separately for the Partition Map (the main line for the drive) and each volume.

If you're on Leopard or Snow Leopard, just select the main line for the drive.

Do the folders have a red "badge" indicating you're not authorized to read them?

No, the folders are normal. I had full access to them before this "hang up" and can open them, they just do not show anything, even if I copy the folder.

I am a bit confused about the Recovery Disks. This is an external HD used just for data and TM backups. I am running Lion so I do not have the disks. If you are suggesting I do Repair from the Disk Utility, I have tried that but it fails since the Disk cannot be "unmounted". Nor can I eject the disk (from this or any other computer I hook it up to) without force ejecting it.

Frank

FrannyP wrote:

. . .

No, the folders are normal. I had full access to them before this "hang up" and can open them, they just do not show anything, even if I copy the folder.

That doesn't sound good. 😟 Sounds like the files are gone. Repair Disk might find them.

I am a bit confused about the Recovery Disks. This is an external HD used just for data and TM backups. I am running Lion so I do not have the disks.

No, you won't. You should have a Recovery HD instead. See Using the Recovery HD.

If you are suggesting I do Repair from the Disk Utility, I have tried that but it fails since the Disk cannot be "unmounted".

Yes, I know. That's why you need to start from the Recovery HD and use Disk Utility from there.

Looks like I have trouble. Running Disk Utility from the Recovery HD reported that this "Disk Cannot Be Repaired...Back up your data and ...."

So I guess my question now is how do I back up the data on this drive if I can't get to the files. When I go the "Get Info" for the Drive it shows that 365 GB are in use and there are 630 GB available, so I am assuming the data is still there. However when I go to each folder they show Zero bytes.

I am confused as to how to try to save this...which is essentially my entire 225 GB music library. The drive is still relatively new and worked perfect until I upgraded to Lion 2 weeks ago.

Grrrrr

Ouch. 😟

You're going to need a heavy-duty 3rd-party Disk Repair utility. DiskWarrior is thought by many to be the "Gold Standard," but some folks prefer others.

DW is $100, and there's no guarantee it will work, but it often can fix things that Disk Utility can't. Some of the others are less expensive.

You'll also need to get another drive. The existing one might be ok, assuming it hasn't failed entirely (hope it's still in warranty). So you might want to continue using it, but at a minimum, get a second drive and use it to back up both your Mac and your media drive.

My sympathies, and keep us posted.

All you need to do i drag teh backups to the trash and boot your MAC to safe mode to delete it. It's that sinple.

FrannyP

I can't verify how safe this is but I don't imagine any harm from doing it this way. Using Activity Monitor, if you can identify the "process" that is being used (backupd ?), click on it and in the next window you can "kill" the process.

Just a thought...

What happens if one goes into the root folder of the backups folder, and goes to the oldest dated backups (I have some from 09, 10,) and just deletes those old backups. Is there some legacy synchonicity that gets lost by doing it this way?

That's supported, in theory, on Lion only. Prior to Lion, that can corrupt your backups and/or cause large problems trying to empty the trash. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #12 for details.

Why do you want to do this? Time Machine will automatically delete the oldest backups when it needs room for new ones. Your best bet is to just let it do that.