OS X :: Can't Delete Time Machine Back-ups From Trash?
Jan 26, 2010
Alright, here's the situation. I have a 1TB external set up with 250gigs partitioned for backing up with time machine, and the rest just for storing files. My time machine partition was full so i decided to move the 5 oldest backups to the trash to make some more room. But when i went to delete trash it counted up to a couple million files and just sat there saying preparing to delete. It was never able to actually start deleting the files, it was just preparing to delete for a couple hours.
Nothing happens, the comupter, macBook Pro, Snow Leopard, freezes. The only functional button is the esc key. Once it is pressed the computer functions.
I have tried repairing permissions on my hard drive, repairing disk on the external disk. Still the same.
I'm an idiot, pleased to meet you.I had 2 external drives connected to my Macbook Pro, both had time machine back ups on...I meant to delete one of these but deleted the wrong one, and dragged it into Trash. On realising my mistake I tried to drag it back out of Trash, as you would normally but after "preparing to copy" for four hours it told me the drive was full...It's a 500gb drive, and the Time Machine back up is the only thing on it, so presumably it's just trying to copy itself when the back up is still present on the drive, albeit in the Trash.
I deleted several folders and photos from my computer. I've emptied my recycle bin a couple times. I want to restore what I had deleted. The problem is that I've got 100's of folders and I don't remember exactly what I deleted. How do I view the trash in time machine so that I can see what I had deleted and restore it. Every time I open up trash and click on time machine it opens as my user folders and not trash.
I have done a search but my problem differs in the large number of files I have. Basically I dragged 6 months of time machine backups into the trash rather than doing the delete through the time machine itself. Now I get error messages (error code:-083, I think) and cannot empty the trash. What is more, I have over 2 million files in the trash from the backups. Either I individually delete files in the trash (without having to empty the whole thing). I also can't just erase and reformat my external hd as I do not have a drive of sufficient capacity to copy everything over and don't want to buy a new one.
I have a 500GB external harddrive that uses TM and have recently wanted to free up some space, so stupidly I manually moved a ton of the backups (I can't even imagine how many gigs) to the trash. The trash bin now can't even fathom the amount of space and literally doesn't empty itself (it goes to like 140,000 items to delete and just keeps going). So I read that you're not supposed to delete TM backups this way but now I'm kind of screwed because I can't move the files from the trash to the External again cause it takes too much time. What the hell am I supposed to do?
Time machine keeps sending old boot.efi files to my trash, and am unable to delete them, maybe because they are locked? should I unlock them and if so, how? should I delete them and if so, how?
Is it possible to back-up the contents of a NAS drive to a FireWire or USB2 drive using a Mac and Time Machine?
I know there are methods to get TM to back-up TO a NAS but if, for example, someone had their iTunes library on a NAS for access over a network- could TM be used to copy that drive for safe-keeping?
The path of the back-up would, basically, go like this:
NAS --> ROUTER --> IMAC & TIME MACHINE --> USB2/FW DRIVE
Sorry if this seems a simple one but searching for an answer just yields dozens of results for backing-up TO a NAS drive, not copying/saving the NAS itself.
Recently, I've figured out that when backing up, time machine only backs up some files, but not the entire thing... I see that this is a way to keep the size of the back up on a low level, true, but isn't it a bad way to back up your files?! Shouldn't it be full backups of the entire library?!
Second question; when I will set up my new mac machine I will buy this summer, is the integration really that easy and files do not get lost?! I am a bit skeptical as a few months ago I integrated data from my old computer to my mac (without using time machine, just regular back ups, manually) and some files were not being imported, god knows why.
Stupid question; when integrating the old files from time machine to a new mac, do they integrate system preferences / applications too? Cause I really have done lots of cool tweaking and it would suck to do all that stuff again...
Also, can I select the files I want to import or does it automatically import all the files from time machine to the new mac? A problem is that there is lots of (cookies, temp files etc.) stored on every mac and now, the quetsion is, does time machine import all these old/makingsystemslower/* little files too?!
What about the problem of leopard > snow leopard recovery?!
If I do a time machine backup - does it back up everything on all accounts or just the one I'm currently logged in as?The reason I'm asking is, I just bought a (used) iMac with a 250GB drive, and I have ordered a 760GB WD green drive. Can I just back up using Time Machine and then restore via Time Machine? I have four accounts on here - I'd rather not have to go through the pains of reinstalling everything.
I made the mistake of deleting an unwanted set of Time Machine backups using the finder. Now I get an error message when I attempt to empty the trash. I have tried operating in safe mode and using option+empty, but neither works.
I understand there is a command that one can issue in Terminal to erase those trash files, but I wasn't able to find it.
I am new here and i have to say desperate. I need to do a system restore from time machine but the mac doesn't see the time machine back ups. I have tried to repair disk and all was ok.
I have 2 seagate external hdds. one has manual backups and my photos, mp3s etc from my pc. the other one is brand new empty. this is my 1st mac.. so I was wondering what to use to back up time machine? or the memeo (comes with seagate) or any other backup software? I want to use the harddrives in both pcs and macs. mac reads my ntfs hdd but can't write it (I know there are some apps that can make the mac write on ntfs.) also I wanna back up my windows xp under parallels.
I was told today by an Apple retail employee that Time Machine will not back up from anything other than an internal drive and I wanted to confirm whether this was the case. For example I have an iMac with a 750GB internal and I also have a 750GB external drive. I want to keep my iTunes Music and iPhoto libraries on the internal but keep all my movies on the external drive for space reasons. I want to then use a 2TB external drive to work with Time Machine. I was told that if I want to back up the 750 "Movies" drive that I will need to manually copy it because Time Machine will only back up the path of those files and that drive can't be included in the backup. To me this seems to go against what TM is about, since I then have to manually manage that part of the backup, adding new items, rather than getting the benefits of TM's incremental backup. Can anyone confirm or deny this. Second question is regarding TM for multiple machines. Can a 2TB drive be used as the TM drive for both an iMac and a MacBook or will the drive need to be partitioned?
I own a uMBP late 09 running 10.6.2. Recently, i bought a Seagate FreeAgent Go 320Gb to use as back-up for both Mac and Windows. I partitioned it into equal HFS+ and FAT32, the former exclusively for Time Machine (which i will be using for the first time), and the latter for Windows.
Initial back-up via TM was successful, as i was able to store about 80Gb of data from my Macintosh partition into the ext drive. The problem is this : After several days of backing-up data, Time Machine displays the same set of files as the initial one. During this time, i have made various additions to my iTunes library as well as movie clips and other documents. These changes/additions did not reflect on the subsequent back-ups made by TM. The initial size of the back-up data stayed the same, pegged at 80Gb.
Am i doing something wrong here? The ext drive does not remain connected to my notebook always, and i only do force back-ups via the TM icon. Also, i have not encountered a single error/failed message when backing-up. On the options menu, i excluded only the Download folder. No other settings were altered.
I've been backing up my mac book pro using a WD passport drive and time machine but recently it stopped backing up and says "back up failed" when I try to back up. I can still access data on the drive but can't save to it anymore.
Info: MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8), WD passport drive
I know this is a common issue and I've read all the other posts and tried everything, but time machine still won't back up. I need help figuring out if there's anything I can do, or if I need a bigger back up disk. If so, how big?
I have deleted old backups, excluded unnecessary files, and cleaned out folders. It says 157.46GB available of 159.7GB; but when it backs up it says it requires 188.30GB but only 157.46GB are available.
