Dave, I couldn't say whether you've mucked things up without the machine in front of me to do some analysis, but perhaps these links on Time Machine backup management might help:
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/if-the-time-machine-backup-disk-is-full-mh15137/mac (Note that El Capitan is too old to be included in the specific instructions that this page lists for, but most of the instructions for all the High Sierra to current Ventura versions of macOS are pretty much the same; one can make the assumption that TM on El Capitan isn't much different.) https://www.macworld.com/article/673089/what-to-do-when-time-machine-backup-is-full.html http://www.creativetechsupport.com/help/mac/transfer/timemachine/full.html In general, it is not a good idea to manipulate the internals of a Time Machine backup manually (or any backup system, for that matter). When you do, you should do it in the very specific ways recommended in the links above. If a backup volume is getting too full, the best thing to do is to disconnect the old volume and archive it, add a new volume, and assign that to Time Machine. For example, I have a 1T internal drive and a 1T Time Machine volume connected to my system. I set up Time Machine such that it excludes my photography files (LR catalog folder and original files - those are managed on and backed up to a completely different set of external volumes which I consider to be much more efficient and robust than the automated TM backup system). When the 1T Time Machine volume is approaching 95% full, before TM starts deleting the oldest files, I disconnect it from the system and mark it with the date I removed it from the system. I then connect another 1T volume that I've reformatted and assign it to be the Time Machine volume, generate an entirely new backup on it. When that one gets to the 95% full mark, I do the same … the 1T volume I swap in is the original TM backup volume that I've reformatted and emptied. It takes about five to six years of use for a TM backup to become full to that point … I've only had to do this about three times … And any truly important data that I want to keep forever (like financial data) I archive into a completely independent archive system along with my photography files. G > On May 12, 2023, at 5:39 AM, David J Brooks <pentko...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Have I screwed myself here? To free up some space in my time machine drive > I moved 47 backup files from 2014 to trash. I know you have to delete the > trash for the new storage info to show up in the toolbar but it seems to > take forever to do anything when I ask to delete permanently, have i made a > big mistake here or is there a way to speed up the delete process? Mid 2010 > con El Capitán, > > it tries to erase but at the end gets this error:"The operation can’t be > completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8072)". Can't > find anything specific online? Any ideas? -- %(real_name)s Pentax-Discuss Mail List To unsubscribe send an email to pdml-le...@pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
