Time machine giving trouble

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Hi,
I have a 1 TB hard disk which I use as my time machine back up. I also have other files on my disk. My backups have used up most of the space in my hard disk and I decided to delete some of them. However, it says I cannot delete any of my back-ups from the disk. This is really irritating. Can someone tell me what I should do??
 

chscag

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Can you tell us exactly how you're trying to remove old backups from your TM external drive? Time Machine should automatically be removing the oldest backups in order to make room for the latest. Though it should notify you first.
 
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Well I just try the 'put it in trash' way. Time machine does notify me, but I don't want my back ups to take up 1 TB space. Is there any way I can reduce this or compartmentalize this??
 
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Well I just try the 'put it in trash' way. Time machine does notify me, but I don't want my back ups to take up 1 TB space. Is there any way I can reduce this or compartmentalize this??

Instead of deleting backups you might want to delete some files you no longer use as tm is only backing up whats on your machine.
 
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Yeah I have done that already, but is there any way for me to clear up my HD i.e. delete my older backups to clear up space for my other files??
 
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Yeah I have done that already, but is there any way for me to clear up my HD i.e. delete my older backups to clear up space for my other files??

Yep login to TM click on one of the older backups, then right click and you will see the options to either:-

Delete All backups
Delete current backup

If you are sure that you now only have the stuff on the machine you want to keep you might be better off deleting all and starting from scratch.

I would personally advise doing it one by one just in case you inadvertently delete something you wish you had kept.

As previous posters have said though TM will delete older backups when it runs out of space so I wouldn't worry about it if it was me.
 
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I am not getting any such option when I right click on the backups!
 
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I am not getting any such option when I right click on the backups!

This is what I see when I right click on TM:-


IMG_3085.jpg


and whats shown in the preferences of TM:-

Screenshot2010-11-03at184219.png


Not sure why yours doesnt show the same though. I am using Snow Leopard.
 
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Okay, I got it. But there is a problem now. When I had put the files in the trash, I found that I couldn't empty the trash. Now I am not able to put those trashed files back into the HD so that I can delete them completely.
 
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Okay, I got it. But there is a problem now. When I had put the files in the trash, I found that I couldn't empty the trash. Now I am not able to put those trashed files back into the HD so that I can delete them completely.

Are they still open in the background?
 
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No they are not.
 
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No they are not.

Sorry dont know then. I used to have a similar thing on my pc but it would normally correct itself once the machine was switched off.
 
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Ah alright. Thank you :( At least I know how to make sure this doesn't happen again in the future.
 

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