How do I delete the OLD Backups.backupdb? I can drag to Trash, but I can't empty the Trash. I get error code -8003.
TIme Machine-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Can't empty trash
None of these files helped, but I finally figured it out (thanks for nothing Apple!). Here is the benefit of my many hours of work. If you try the first option, please let me know if it worked. Now that my file is finally erased, I can't try it myself.
THE SITUATION: You have copied your Time Machine database “Backups.backupdb” to a new drive, and Time Machine is using it successfully. The old database is probably taking up a lot of room on the old drive. Mine was over 700 GB. You send it to the Trash, but you can’t empty the Trash (error code -8003). What do you do? Here is what I did:
FIRST, DO THIS: I spent a lot of time with the method below, and at the end I still had a 700+ MB file with no backups in it. I tried trashing and emptying the Trash but got the same -8003 error code. I did a “Get Info” on the Backups.backupdb file and saw that Sharing & Permissions was set to “system-Read” & Write and “everyone-Read only.” Click the lock, enter your password and change everyone to “Read & Write.” Close the Get Info box, send the file to the Trash and Empty the Trash. This worked. I suggest you try this FIRST. If the Trash empties, put your hands in the air, shout “Hallelujah” and be thankful you just save hours of work!
Now, if it doesn’t work that easily, I’ll take you step by step through what I did to get rid of the file. I would strongly recommend that you choose a time when you don’t need to use the computer for anything else. This will take hours, and might best be done overnight.
IMPORTANT: Before you begin, open Time Machine Preferences and turn OFF Time Machine!
1. With the Time Machine icon in the Dock, right click to “Browse Other Time Machine Disks”
2. Select the disk where the OLD Backups.backupdb file is located.
3. The front Time Machine window will be today, but the next layer back should be the last day the old database was used.
4. FROM THIS SCREEN, Click on your computer in the sidebar and Click on the Gear icon and select "Delete All Backups of ..." (If you select “Delete Backup” it will only delete this single backup.)
5. You will get a warning window to confirm you want to do this.
6. You will need to then enter your password in the next window.
7. Then you WAIT.
Time Machine begins be deleting the OLDEST backup first, then the next and the next. It’s hard to tell if anything is happening, but I discovered that during the deletion process, if you got to the oldest window you will see the file size deminish until the window is blank. Use the scroll arrow to move forward in time and you will see this happen again. The space available count at the bottom of the screen will slowly increase as well. Once you are comfortable that the deletion is happening, go to bed.
Good luck!
I love this answer. The other possibility, of course, is to reformat the drive, which it looks like I have to do with an errant sparse bundle which refuses to delete.
Solved the problem! after a hint by 'nick_harambee', dated Feb 21, 2009 (see at the bottom of: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1914680) in which he suggested to enable 'guest access' in the Airport Utility tab on the Time Machine..!
Instead of all failed attempts to change the permissions with 'chflags' (for which you don't have the permission ;-)..
So, now the whole -unneeded- sparse.bundle can be erased and Time Capsule disk space recovered..
Thanks 'nick_harambee'! for the simple hint,
Gerard
Thank you - looks like you solved my issue
THANKS, cosaguy !!! IT WORKS !!!
I had this same problem and also tried your "first do this" solution. This got rid of the majority of the files, but left a few ".efi" files lingering.
I realized this was because these were locked files and you cannot lock/unlock files recursively if they have different settings to begin with.
So, instead of your second solution, try navigating to the end files that are locked, "Get Info" on these files, and UNCHECK the "Locked" checkbox. This should now allow this file to be deleted.
To get as many as you can in one swoop, you can try to select the top-most folder, do "Get Info" and actually CHECK the Locked checkbox if not checked. Then, at the bottom of the Get Info window, click on the little settings dropdown (gear icon) and select "apply to enclosed items." After you've done this, do the same thing again, but this time UNCHECK the "locked" checkbox, and again "apply to enclosed items".
I found that this got rid of most of the locked file status, allowing me to delete most. For some reason, there were about 12 files left that I had to do manually.
Hope this helps...
I had a silver lock on my sparesbundle.
I called Apple support and through screenshare we found a solution to have the file deleted
Open terminal and
Write: sudo rm -rf FILE
FILE: Drag sparsebundle file from finder into terminal and the full path will automatically be written.
Press return,
Enter password,
Wupti, you have just gotten rid of a huge file which took up a lot of space!!! 🙂
Note, these Sudo commands are some dangerous to use.
jakob.joergensen wrote:
I had a silver lock on my sparesbundle.
I called Apple support and through screenshare we found a solution to have the file deleted
Open terminal and
Write: sudo rm -rf FILEFILE: Drag sparsebundle file from finder into terminal and the full path will automatically be written.
Press return,
Enter password,
Wupti, you have just gotten rid of a huge file which took up a lot of space!!! 🙂
Note, these Sudo commands are some dangerous to use.
This is the only answer on this page that worked for me! It may not fix it from happening again, but it allowed me to empty the trash! Thanks jakob.joergensen!!
ctaulbee wrote:
This is the only answer on this page that worked for me! It may not fix it from happening again, but it allowed me to empty the trash! Thanks jakob.joergensen!!
There is a reason sudo is required to edit these Time Machine backups - the contained files are backups of private user data. Many levels of complex permissions are stored in the backups to stop one user snooping on other users files.
This will ALWAYS happen if you delete like this - it is how Time machine is designed to work - you are not meant to delete backups like this. If you want to remove backup items selectively use the 'gear' button in the 'Browse Time Machine' view to 'delete all backups of [the selection]'.
The best and safest option is to reformat the disk instead of manually erasing backups via Finder.
Time Machine uses many advanced file system features that have the potential to go wrong. Erase the filesystem & create a new one in Disk Utility & you remove the possibility of old data breaking your backups. Build your backups on a solid foundation (e.g a new filesystem made under the current OS) not on one you created years ago.
THANK YOU. I have been trying to trash my files for hours now. 😀
I found a better way. I first connected my time machine drive to the mac and turned off the time machine through system preferences.
I then tried formatting the disk through disk utility but it wouldn't let me do that, saying that the disk can't be unmounted.
The idea behind the solution is this: since disk utility can't unmount the disk, it has to be done manually. Terminal has a diskutil command that can be used to do this but the directory in which this command is located is not in the computer's PATH variable.
I solved this by typing the following in terminal
PATH = /usr/sbin:$PATHThe diskutil command is in /usr/bin without adding this folder to the PATH variable, the computer can't find the command and use it. Adding it to the path variable tells the computer to look in that folder for thediskutil command.
Then, type the following to forcibly unmount the disk.
diskutil unmountDisk force /Volumes/VOLUMENAMEIn the above command, replace VOLUMENAME with the name of your hard drive. If the name has any spaces in it, replace all the spaces with (Backslash, space) For example, refer to a hard drive name "My Hard Drive" as "My\ Hard\ Drive"
If this is unsuccessful, repeat the above command with the keyword "sudo" in front.
sudo diskutil unmountDisk force /Volumes/VOLUMENAMEAgain, follow the same instructions regarding VOLUMENAME and the spaces.
Your hard drive should be successfully unmounted now.
To format the hard drive, just head back to disk utility and click erase.
Everything should run smoothly now.
Good luck!
I just looked in my delete folder because of your "do this first". I did the "Get info" and all of my deleted backups that had been there for months under the share were locked. I unlocked the first backup in the list of BUs I had tried to delete and it unlocked all.
Emptied the trash and they are all now gone.
Thanks
This worked! Just need to be clear about what you type in : "sudo rm - rf " then drag the folder/file you want to delete, then after the path shows up, press return...
This really helpt me out too. Thank you very much!
How do I delete the OLD Backups.backupdb? I get error code -8003 when I try to empty trash.