Can't delete old Time Machine backups from Trash I was trying to delete some old Time Machine backups from my backup drive. I am running into a few issues.

I tried the method outlined in this article of simply moving them to the trash. After I moved old backup folders to the trash, I tried deleting them from the trash, but got the following error:



I clicked &quot;Get Info&quot; and tried to set permissions for everyone from &quot;Read Only&quot; to &quot;Read and Write.&quot; However, when trying to delete the folders I get the same issue.

I tried writing rm -rf '/Volumes/MacBook Pro Backup/.Trashes/501/2020-07-03-051423' in the terminal, but I get permission denied issues for all files in the folder. I am afraid to use sudo in front of the command in case this is not the correct way to delete the backups.

I tried finding the &quot;Put back&quot; option when right clicking the backup folder to put the backups back into the original location, but the option was not there.

I tried dragging and dropping the folders from the trash to the original backup location, but I get the following error:



Is there any way I can restore the old backups or remove them completely, without having to format my TM drive?
I fixed this by using tmutil delete.
First, I changed directory into where all the trashed backups were being kept:
cd /Volumes/MacBook\ Pro\ Backup/.Trashes/501

Then, I checked all the files in the directory to make sure I knew what I was deleting. This showed me a list of folders named by date:
sudo ls

Afterwards, I was able to use tmutil delete to delete all the backups:
sudo tmutil delete *

From now on, whenever I want to delete old backups, I will use tmutil delete on the backup folder.