TO DELETE TIME MACHINE BACKUP

Ummmm... Turn off time machine and throw the backup files in the trash

Also, p,ease don't type in ALL CAPS. Its considered shouting and is rude.

If there's nothing else on the drive, just erase it with Disk Utility (see #2 in Using Disk Utility). That will only take a few moments.

Ah, I misunderstood, sorry. 😊

You were talking about the Local Snapshots that Time Machine keeps on your internal HD, not normal Time Machine backups to a locally-connected external HD.

Once you turn Time Machine OFF, the Local Snapshots are deleted automatically (it may take a while).

But in most cases they're not a problem; they're "thinned" down to one per day, and deleted after a week. Plus, if your internal HD gets too full (90% on a large drive, less on smaller ones), they'll be deleted automatically.

See #30 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions for the gory details.

A genius from apple told me to delete the backups.backupdb and restart time machine to correct the error I keep getting the Time Machine Error - "Unable to complete backup. An error occured while creating the backup folder."

I turned off Time Machine and removed it from the Dock. Each time I try to drag backups.backupdb to the waste basket I get the error, "Operation cannot be deleted because an usexpected error code occured (error code -50)"

As posted earlier, just erase the drive with Disk Utility (see #2 inUsing Disk Utility). That will only take a few moments.

Can't I have other files on the drive. I would move them to my hard drive temporarily if I could determine how much space I have left on my iMac hard rive and the size of the folder on the external drive that I want to move to my iMac hard drive. It's almost impossible to see the size of a high level folder.

chickiejcr wrote:

Can't I have other files on the drive.

That's a problem. See #3 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

For your immediate problem, see #C10 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. That may fix it, and you won't have to delete them. The Geniuses don't seem to get much training on Time Machine, and they don't use it in the stores.

It's almost impossible to see the size of a high level folder.

Do a Get Info on it and be patient.

Get info give "Size - -" not particularly helpful to say the least. Really frustrating when the Apple interface is supposed to be so "easy." What a joke.

As posted, be patient. If there are lots of files and sub-folders, it will take a while to add them all up.

Great, I got the size which is 900+G so I guess it can't do more backups because there is no more room on a 1 TB hard drive. so now, can I delete interim backups or does Time Machine do that for me? It's supposed to right?

chickiejcr wrote:

Great, I got the size which is 900+G so I guess it can't do more backups because there is no more room on a 1 TB hard drive.

Not necessarily, but there clearly isn't much room.

so now, can I delete interim backups or does Time Machine do that for me? It's supposed to right?

It will delete the oldest backup(s) to make room for new ones, if it can. Most likely, one of two things have happened:

• The drive is so chock full, it can't even get started (the first thing it does is ceate a folder, but that's where it's failed).
• The backups are corrupted.

It's a long shot, but see if you can copy some files off temporarily, and delete them; a few hundred MBs should be enough. Then try deleting the backups again.

If that doesn't help, try Repairing the backups, per #A5 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. That will probably take quite a while, with that much data (it's more the number of items, rather than the total size). If that succeeds, you should be able to delete the backups.

Either way, you may have trouble emptying the trash; if you do, see #E6 in the same article.

You really need another drive to use for backups. If you want to back up both your internal HD and the 900+ GBs on the current one, it will need to be quite large.

That's another good option. I would never have thought about it.

PS doesn't work with SSD drives

I have tried to drag the Backups.backupdb folder to the trash but I am told that the operation can't be completed because the item is in use. Nor can I unmount my external drive from any computer. Finder is using the file and I cannot figure out how to permanently kill this association.

Any advice would be appreciated.

That's a different problem. 😟

If you want to get rid of all the backups, first turn Time Machine OFF and if a backup is running, cancel it. If it won't cancel after a few minutes, see #D6 inTime Machine - Troubleshooting. Close any Finder windows that are looking at the drive.

Then erase the drive with Disk Utility. That will only take a few moments. See #2 in Using Disk Utility if you're not sure how to do that.

If it still says it's in use, Restart your Mac and try again. If it still won't erase, start from your OSX Install Disc (Leopard or Snow Leopard) or Recovery HD (Lion), per the yellow box in #2.

If you have other data on the drive, besides the backups, your best bet is to copy it elsewhere temporarily, erase the drive, then copy it back.