You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

jarred82 Author

Level 1

4 points

How to delete entire time machine backup from external

I have an external hard drive that i run a back up for my macbook but i need to run a temporary backup of an imac whilst i upgrade the internal hard drive. Now i dont have a second hard drive and want to delete the entire time machine backup of the macbook off the external to make space so that i can do the temporary back of the imac and then after restoring the imac, delete the time machine backup of the imac and redo the backup of the macbook.

Confusing i know, but does anyone know the proper process of deleting the backup because i have done the whole move to trash and due the security on the encrypted files, caused a major problem on my external, causing me to have to run first aid and restoring of my external.

Thanks in advance.

MacBook

Posted on Jul 4, 2020 10:30 AM

Top-ranking reply

Kappy

Level 10

361,849 points

Posted on Jul 4, 2020 10:47 AM

You can only remove Time Machine backups using the Time Machine application or by erasing the backup drive. I think you should do the latter.

Drive Preparation - El Capitan or Later

Open Disk Utility in the Utilities' folder.
After Disk Utility loads select the drive (out-dented entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the side list.
Click on the Erase button in the Disk Utility toolbar. A panel should drop down.
In the drop down panel set the partition scheme to GUID. Set the Format type to APFS (SSDs only) or Mac OS Extended (Journaled.)
Click on the Apply button and click on the Done button when it is activated.
Quit Disk Utility.

Run the Time Machine backup you need. When completed, you can erase the drive again before re-running Time Machine.

View in context

How to delete entire time machine backup from external

Similar questions