OS X V10.6 Snow Leopard :: Easily Delete Duplicate Files In Old Time Machine Archives?
Apr 7, 2012
I have multiple older Time Machine archives from different Macs that I have been going through manually and picking files out and copying them to another drive file by file. I'm running into massive quantities of duplicate files and the biggest problem is muliple iphoto pictures including the same picture in different sizes.Â
I wanted to give up and just throw the whole Time Machine archive onto another disk so I could format the one it was on and use it for something else. But I got a message reading, "The backup can’t be copied because the backup volume doesn’t have ownership enabled." So I went to manually copy each "Macintosh HD" folder for each date into it's their own respective folders. It worked but required my password for each folder and each of the 19 folders were all ~75GB. Which is impossible because all of that data was on a 500GB drive.Â
I'd like to keep one backup of a particularly large file in Time Machine, but all the incremental backups are taking up a ton of room. I've read how you can delete all backups of one file, and all files in one backup. But can you delete one file in one backup?
I have set up an automator service that TAR's a folder into an archive for me and it works quite nicely. Idealy however, I would like to be able to highlight several folders, right click and have automator tar each folder into it's own TAR archive, but do it one by one. Â
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I'm not 100% sure so I guess it would be a good time to verify, is there a problem with having the system try to TAR multiple folders at one time? If it is not a problem then I guess this discussion itself is pointless and I can simple right click on each folder and select "TAR Folder" and just wait until they're all finished. I would think that it would be ideal for the system to do each one individually and not try to do them all at one time.Â
I'm running Time Machine on a Western Digital network storage device from my iMac. It works fine. I can go back any amount of time and recover files as they were backed up then. But I also want to be able to depend on Time Machine backups to allow me to recover files if my iMac goes down. So just as a test, I tried to use the Browse Other Time Machine Disks feature from my MacBook Air. I can't make it work. It shows me a Choose Time Machine Disk to Browse window, but there are no disks in the choose pane.Â
People have been telling me that I have to "mount" the volume, but I see no way to do so. Clicking Go - Connect to Server - Browse, shows me that the backup disk is there; it's called <mydiscname>-backup. But when I try to connect to it I get an immediate connection failure.Â
 I'm beginning to suspect that there is no way to restore from another computer when the Time Machine backups are on a network storage device? If this is true, people need to know it and stop using network storage for Time Machine, as it won't be safe if their principal Mac goes down.Â
I am trying to restore photoshop files I created and seem to have erased by mistake. For some of the files Time Machine gives me the following message :
The opreation cannot be completed because you don't have permission to access " filename"Â
I created these files and they are important and I do not know what else to do to retrieve them.Â
I ordered the $29 upgrade online. I was wondering if I could do a hard drive format and fresh install then restore my photos and documents and mp3s from my Time Capsule using Time Machine. This would probably free up even more HD space and make the OS cleaner and fresher, no? Would this be possible?
So I just started using Time Machine (had been using CCC). A quick scan of my backup shows that it's not backing up my Outlook email database file. This missing file is very concerning to me. First of all, this is one of my most important files, needless to say. But also, it makes me wonder, what other important files might Time Machine be deciding to skip without my knowledge. I went into my Time Machine preferences and have no exclusions in there
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. Â
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 have a Macbook with OS X 10.6.8 and a 500GB external hard drive, which still has 208.5GB available. For some reason, Time Machine has simply stopped backing up any new files (documents, music, movies--anything). No items are set to be excluded from backups in Time Machine options except for the external hard drive itself. Also, no error messages appear, Time Machine seems to run just fine, but when I enter Time Machine, or look through the files on the hard drive, new files just aren't there. I am not very tech savvy, so I was not able to understand some of the answers people gave to similar questions on here. I did go to Pondini's website and followed as many troubleshooting instructions as I could understand (for example I did manage to do a full reset of Time Machine) but nothing changed. Do I just need to erase the entire backup drive and sart all over? If so, what will prevent this from happening again later on?
I just made a TM backup of two user accounts (A & B) on one iMac.I now want to delete the files and accounts from the iMac and create a new user account.(A & B shared this computer and it is now going to be used by a third person alone. I don't want all the additional unused A & B account data clogging the hard drive.)Â If I delete the original A & B user accounts, will I still be able to access the backed up files? How?
Info: Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.5), iBook G4/iMacFP/G4Tower/Bondi/3400/165/SE/Plus
I have an early 2006 iMac with 10.5.8, and I am having hard drive problems. I want to reformat my drive, then install 10.6. Can I do that, then restore my files with Time Machine? Will it restore applications?
Info: iMac 17" Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz 2Gb Mem, Mac OS X (10.4.8)
I did a search for this before making my post, and I couldn't find anything that would work.
I'm in the middle of doing my final year uni project (a documentary using final cut pro) and I'm fast running out of hard drive space and thought I'd use the external HD I've been using for my Time Machine backups, but when I simply dragged the folder to the trash it wouldn't let me delete it, after hours of waiting. So I sent it all back to the HD from the trash. I tried the disk utility thing and it still wouldn't let me. I wasn't sure if I should select the actual hard drive, or the time machine logo, then which type of delete to choose...
I have an external HD and have botched up all the time machine backups pretty badly. (deleting backups, adding things to the time machine disk not using a TM backup, etc).Â
I just want to delte everything and start over from scratch.Â
I found 3,708,612 copies of zero byte plist files in over 50 folders in my Time Machine backup database. One perf-pane application made all of them. Is there a fast way, really fast way to delete all of them at once. The spinning ball takes a long time to delete even one file stored 50 or more times in different or the same folder.
Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 3.6 GHz Intel Core i5
I have tried two apps that detect and delete duplicate files. Both will find duplicate files of all types, and then fail to delete them. I tried first with "Duplicate Detective" and thought it must be the application's fault; then I tried "The Duplicate Finder" and received the following message:Â
Failed to delete files
Please check their permission for removal. Â
Support the Duplicate Detective app reviewed my console logs and said that my computer from removing files in Users/"my name"/folder.Â
I tried repairing disk permissions through the disk utility and that didn't work. Â
Info: MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)
I decided to reinstall Leopard, Erase and Install. Everything runs much faster of course. I'm doing some restoring from my Time Machine HD. I don't want a complete restore, I'm just grabbing folders here and there from my TM HD and restoring it. I'm doing a backup now and so far it has deleted over 20GB of my backups and it doesn't seem to be stopping.
I know that I have many duplicate downloads (particularly Adobe Reader Files) that I would like to trash. Is there an easier way to find duplicates other than opening them all and comparing them?
I plan to 'clean up' my Time Machine/Time capsule completely, whereby I want to make it impossible for third parties to recover all or part of these old backups.After I have accompished this I want to start from scratch backing up my Mac.
Since I have switched from windows I have many duplicate files and even triplicate files! I was told (from a Mac Genius ) that leopard won't let you look at your picture files. So I want to rid the excess and save some hard drive space.
I cannot seem to set up Time Machine using Time Capsule on my MacBook Pro. Evidently when I initially set up AirPort Extreme, I failed to select it as the backup disc.
Info:AirPort Extreme 802.11n (4th Gen), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Is there a way to completely remove files from my system without moving them to the Trash?  I've read about the Trash, but I'm not clear on EXACTLY how it works. Can I empty A file from the trash or when I click on a file & choose "Emtpy the Trash" does it empty ALL of the files in the Trash or just that one file?  Is there a way to just empty ONLY 1 file from the trash or restore ONLY 1 file from the Trash if so how? ALSO, what are the "rules" for MOVING files rather than COPYing them? I thought files that went from one folder to another on the same drive, were moved & ones that went to different drives were copied. It seems like I've run acrorss instances where that's not how things work.
i have Macbook pro running on Mac OS X, Snow Leopard ver. 10.6.8 . I am not able to delete rename and modify my desktop folder and files. even through the admin account and all previleges i cant move them to Thrash. as i try to delete them it asks for password and then no action takes place. i have even used repair permissions from disk utility, used the terminal window method but nothing happened. the "get info " shows read and write permision but still i cannot even rename them there.
I have a Mini (OSX 10.6.4) and a 1TB external drive that I use for TM. When I connect the drive two backups are made. They are the same size and contain the same number of files. Why two backups are made?
