Emptying trash problem :(

Hey, basically i want to get rid of all my time machine back ups on my external harddrive.

I have turned time machine off. And then my backups.backup.db folder contains 800GB worth of backups.

When i go to simply drag the folder into the trash, the files go to delete (about 8000) and then it goes to negative numbers.

Is this normal for deleting time machine back ups? or files with such large quantities?

Or is there a more efficient way to delete time machine back ups in bulk.

The reason i want to delete all (or most) of them is because i need to transfer a lot of my files off my mac to the external.

Thanks!

Yes, this is normal. If you don't want to "see" it, you can just delete the folder from the command line/terminal.app. I personally think deleting via command line is quicker, but I have no metrics to back that up.

XJ-linux said:

Yes, this is normal. If you don't want to "see" it, you can just delete the folder from the command line/terminal.app. I personally think deleting via command line is quicker, but I have no metrics to back that up.

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so how long would the negative numbers remain on the screen? does it eventually go away?

and if you recommend it, how would i do that thing on terminal ? i have never really used it before.

Thanks for your help so far though