Trashing Time Machine documents.

Graham

Graham

Well-Known Member
I posted this issue before (Mar 14th) and possibly I did not explain the problem properly.
In the trash are 1/2 dozen files that I removed from the the time machine backup hard drive.
They have been there for quite some time.... I verified that these files do in fact reside in the TM external drive.
When I try to empty trash a window pops up as images attached .... I have search google and anything mentioned there did not work
How can these be trashed ... short of Erasing the drive . OS Sierra 10.12.6
 

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DaveWT

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
In the trash are 1/2 dozen files that I removed from the the time machine backup hard drive.
They have been there for quite some time.... I verified that these files do in fact reside in the TM external drive.
Click to expand...

I find this statement confusing... On the one hand you say you removed these files from the T M backup hard drive but on the other hand you state that the files do in fact reside on the T M drive.

How, in fact, did you get them into Trash? In general it is best not to mess directly with the Time Machine backups. They will prune stuff automatically when the drive starts to get full. But if you really don't want a file to be kept on the Time Machine drive any longer, you can go into the Time Machine application and select the a file you want to remove, right click on it and you will see the option to "Delete all backups of (that file)"

If you do that first on a file that you have (somehow) put into Trash, then perhaps it will then let you delete that copy from Trash.
 
Graham

Graham

Well-Known Member
Let me try to explain,.... The files (which were folders) I tried to delete belong in the external hard drive.... which is where the TM backups live. How these folders got separated (pulled out of the TM and put into the Trash I cannot recall .... I do know that to trash a file or folder from the time machine cannot be done as you get a warning "The opertation cannot be completed because backup items cant be modified"
At any rate after frigging around for a week I just erased the drive and ran a new backup.
 
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