How to delete Time Machine Backups that were moved into Recycle Bin Trash? I use Time Machine on an external drive to back up my files. The external drive was getting close to be being full so I moved all the backed up file folders to my Recycle Bin (Trash) on my Desktop to permanently delete them. When I go try and empty the trash though it is taking forever because there's so many files in there now. Does anyone know if there is a quicker way around this - a way to delete these files and get them out of the trash without it taking hours or days? Thank you!
If the drive is getting close to be being full, TM will free the space automatically.

You can empty the Trash (delete the files) much faster with Terminal command

rm -rf ~/.Trash/*


However, you will probably corrupt your entire backup by deleting specific TM snapshots (folders with datetime in the name). Learn how TM is actually storing the data on the drive (hint: symlinks).