Deleting redundant back ups.

[Doc Horrorshow]

I'm trying to delete an old back up from an external hard drive. The iMac it backed up is now long gone and I want to free up some space on that external drive. I'm finding I cannot get permission to 'write' to the drive and delete that back up folder despite repairing permissions etc. Could anyone suggest a solution?

 

[Fishrrman]

Can't you do this?

1. Mount the drive in the finder
3. You want ONLY the drive icon to show in the finder (NOT any folders on the drive)
4. Type "command-i" (eye) to bring up the get info dialog again
5. Click the lock icon on the bottom right and enter your password
6. In "sharing and permissions", is there a checkbox "ignore ownership on this volume" ??
7. If so, put a checkmark into it and close get info

Now... you should be able to delete ANYTHING on that drive.

 

[Doc Horrorshow]

Can't you do this?

1. Mount the drive in the finder
3. You want ONLY the drive icon to show in the finder (NOT any folders on the drive)
4. Type "command-i" (eye) to bring up the get info dialog again
5. Click the lock icon on the bottom right and enter your password
6. In "sharing and permissions", is there a checkbox "ignore ownership on this volume" ??
7. If so, put a checkmark into it and close get info

Now... you should!

Excellent, worked well!

 

[brobson]

I am embarrassed that I don't know this but can I delete all but the latest folder? I never delete because I don't want to lose anything! So i can delete all of these folders except the last one? I have compared the last and next to last one.

 

[brobson]

Ok now I have another question. I am going through and deleting everything in the two backup drives i have that are duplicates or are obsolete. Much to my horror my movies are gone. I have movies I dubbed from VHS to .mov and stored in the drive. The information c+i says it's there but it is blank. I drop it into VLC and no good. These are movies of my babies, I'm so upset! I have a 1T Hitachi and a 3T Seagate drive.

 

[Fishrrman]

brobson wrote:
(see image of all the Time Machine backup folders in post 4 above)

Here's the primary reason why I won't use Time Machine.
I don't want "a backup" like that.
I want one that is "a representation of my drive" the last time I backed up.
That's all.
And that's why I use "a cloning app" for backups.

Perhaps some folks need more.
After nearly 30 years of "backing up", I've found that a cloned backup "does it for me"...