How to delete Time Machine backups

[physguy]

I'm lost in trying to delete the backup directories created by Time Machine. I've moved disks around on my network and TIme Machine doesn't seem to remember that it's backed up a given system to a given disk previously, after moving the disk to a different server. So I'm content to start over and I went to /Volumes/Backupdisk/Backups.backupdb and tried 'sudo rm -rf *' to get rid of the existing backups in preparation to start over. It wouldn't let me remove them getting the error 'Operation not permitted'. I note that 'ls -l' shows a lot of rwxr-xr-x@ with the @ sign at the end and I'm assuming that this is a hard link, but I don't know. I'm also thinking this is why rm won't work - multiple hard links?

Any unix guru out there that can help? I really don't want to re-format the disk. BTW I am currently trying to use Time Machine to delete all the file but that is taking FOR EVER and I'm not sure its actually doing anything. Its been about 30 minutes and there's been not reported increase in disk space. Its like its still preparing to delete.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[mydo]

One thing that Time Machine dose is create hard links to folders which isn't allowed under regular unix. So I would think that the typical command line tools would choke on these.

Doesn't the app' itself have a way to "start over"?

[King Chung Huang]

Just drag Backups.backupdb to the Trash in Finder and Empty Trash.

[physguy]

Originally Posted by King Chung Huang

Just drag Backups.backupdb to the Trash in Finder and Empty Trash.

That's might work, eventually and I might try that overnight but after 1 hour of no progress I was looking for a faster way. There must be some Apple create command line tool equivalent to rm. Just don't know where/how to find it.

[physguy]

Originally Posted by mydo

One thing that Time Machine dose is create hard links to folders which isn't allowed under regular unix. So I would think that the typical command line tools would choke on these.

Doesn't the app' itself have a way to "start over"?

Not that I can find.

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally Posted by mydo

One thing that Time Machine dose is create hard links to folders which isn't allowed under regular unix. So I would think that the typical command line tools would choke on these.

Doesn't the app' itself have a way to "start over"?

Yes and no. The way Time Machine does hard links is by not allowing recursive hard links to folders. It won't allow one to do such a dumb action and that dumb action is the reason UNIX traditionally didn't include hardlinks to folders and does allow symlinks.

[iGrouch]

Hey Guys

There may be a really easy way to do this.

Open time Machine. Go to the top level i.e the one with your HD. Navigate to the backup you want to delete and use the actions menu in the Finder toolbar. It has an option to delete the backup. Also, when using the actions menu, with a file or folder selected there is an option to delete all instances of the file/folder from all backups.


Just reading this and having stumbled upon ways to do certain things in Leopard, makes me think that it is a bit remiss of Apple not to have all these things documented for easy viewing on the net. Instead people are ending doing all sorts of crazy things when there is an easy way to do it.

[iGrouch]

Yup. It does work. I just deleted a rather large backup that I really didn't want and got 7.9 GB back.

[physguy]

Originally Posted by iGrouch

Yup. It does work. I just deleted a rather large backup that I really didn't want and got 7.9 GB back.

I'm glad to here it works, in principle, but so far it has not seemed to work for my 73 GB backup. I admit I only gave it 1 HOUR before frustration set it. How long did your 7.9 GB delete take???

I'm amazed that there is no command line version of 'rm' to delete these, or no information from Apple as to what the command-line version is.

BTW, if your interested, the unique identifier for a given backup is the MAC address of the Ethernet port (not AirPort) of the Computer being backed up.

[iGrouch]

The deletion of the 7.9GB update was instantaneous.

[physguy]

Originally Posted by iGrouch

The deletion of the 7.9GB update was instantaneous.

Well, I started the delete before I left for work and checked it about 3 hours later and it had completed. Now, this 73 GB was composed of about 1.3 million files, so maybe - BUT - I would really like to know how to remove these from the command line, if anyone knows.

[besson3c]

I found a solution here...

code:

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sudo fsaclctl -p /Volumes/<yourVolume> -d

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Will disable ACLs on this volume. Then you can do a:

code:

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cd /Volumes/<yourVolume>/Backups.backupdb/<yourMachine>

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code:

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sudo find . -maxdepth 1 -ctime +1 -exec rm -rfv {} \;

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To delete all backups created more than a day ago (or substitute any other 24 hour period as an argument for ctime)

[DeaPeaJay]

I was googling a way to do this and came upon this thread. Just thought I'd throw my voice in here and say that I found the quickest way was to just open Disk Utility and erase the partition of my drobo that housed my Time Machine backup. It works if Time Machine is the only thing on the drive or partition. I had a 400ish GB backup and deleting it any other way would take FOREVER.