Deleting all occurrences of a sub-directory in Time Machine

[John Sankey]

In prior versions of OSX, opening Time Machine, going to last backup, then right-click on a file/subdirectory gave the option to delete all occurrences of it from Time Machine. I've got a huge sub-directory that I've backed up to a USB stick and want to make space on the Time Machine disk for more backups. How can I do it now?

 

[MacsBug]

On newer OS's Time Machine backups are not editable. You would have to format the drive and start a new backup excluding the sub directory.

 

[TonyAguila]

And the file structure of Time Machine drives is nothing like Finder files. I would never tamper with Time Machine volumes, and Time Machine itself will cull its contents when the drive gets full, deleting the oldest backups so theoretically, they will never get full.

If you want to be able to directly control your backups, I would recommend using a cloning app like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper. But I would still keep my Time Machine backup drives as well.