Kevin Sherman Posted January 29, 2008 Share Posted January 29, 2008 Hey all. A long ways back when I first got Leopard, I activated Time Machine. Perhaps a neat backup solution, it sucks (IMO) for laptops. So I deactivated Time Machine and removed my External drive from the Time Machine setup. Thing is, there is 230GB of used space on my external drive that I need freed up (never though I would run out of space on a 500GB drive, its a brave new world!). I have tried simply using the Finder, it goes through the process of deleting everything, but nothing actually gets deleted. Fun. Then I got knowledgeable and used the Terminal, doing a little cd /Volumes/External action with a little sudo rm -rf Backup.backupdb (of course then entering my little admin password) Immediately every file returns with a File location string and a fun little : Operation not permitted. message. Any suggestions? I don't have the ability to copy the files I want to keep and reformat the drive, I don't have any hard drives big enough to back up too. Thanks all... KS Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/84355-deleting-entire-time-machine-backup/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
ipguy Posted January 29, 2008 Share Posted January 29, 2008 Hey all. A long ways back when I first got Leopard, I activated Time Machine. Perhaps a neat backup solution, it sucks (IMO) for laptops. So I deactivated Time Machine and removed my External drive from the Time Machine setup. Thing is, there is 230GB of used space on my external drive that I need freed up (never though I would run out of space on a 500GB drive, its a brave new world!). I have tried simply using the Finder, it goes through the process of deleting everything, but nothing actually gets deleted. Fun. Then I got knowledgeable and used the Terminal, doing a little cd /Volumes/External action with a little sudo rm -rf Backup.backupdb (of course then entering my little admin password) Immediately every file returns with a File location string and a fun little : Operation not permitted. message. Any suggestions? I don't have the ability to copy the files I want to keep and reformat the drive, I don't have any hard drives big enough to back up too. Thanks all... KS mount the external drive and use diskutils to "erase the volume"... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/84355-deleting-entire-time-machine-backup/#findComment-598835 Share on other sites More sharing options...
skyhighmac Posted January 29, 2008 Share Posted January 29, 2008 Yeah. Thats the easiest way. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/84355-deleting-entire-time-machine-backup/#findComment-598871 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin Sherman Posted January 29, 2008 Author Share Posted January 29, 2008 Hmm. Well, I am not really able to pull the files I need off the external drive. I don't have access to a hard drive of sufficient size... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/84355-deleting-entire-time-machine-backup/#findComment-598897 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ipguy Posted January 29, 2008 Share Posted January 29, 2008 Hmm. Well, I am not really able to pull the files I need off the external drive. I don't have access to a hard drive of sufficient size... then all i can suggest is to burn multiple dvd's until you have all the files you want from the time machine disk then reformat ! space is a finite resource, if your out, your out ! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/84355-deleting-entire-time-machine-backup/#findComment-598915 Share on other sites More sharing options...
idividebyzero Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 Try creating a new admin account, log in and delete the folder. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/84355-deleting-entire-time-machine-backup/#findComment-600476 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colonel Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 sudo rm -rf /files/to/delete Tried that yet? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/84355-deleting-entire-time-machine-backup/#findComment-600507 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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