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John Williams breaks down the real process for deleting old backups from Time Machine. Hint: It ain't as easy as dropping them in the trash can.
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A few weeks ago I tried to use my Time Machine-managed backup hard drive for manually backing up a hard drive that was dying on me. But to copy those files over, I needed more space. So I grabbed a handful of months-old backups and deleted them. You know, via the "Trash Can -> Empty Trash" method.
Turns out that this was entirely the wrong thing to do. Don't do this. It's bad. I had to format my Time Machine backup drive completely and start all over. Time Machine and the Trash Can don't cooperate.
The right way to do it is a little complicated, so I made a screencast to explain how it works:
Deleting backups from Time Machine without getting screwed from John Williams on Vimeo.
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Thanks for the tip. Saved me a lot of frustration. Good job.
Posted by John on 01/31/10 at 9:47AM