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Lots of "Cleanup Failed" for Time Machine files - just delete those backups?

cnixon

My work email account was hijacked by spammers, which was my first clue that something was wrong.  At my website host's recommendation, I installed and ran Sophos anti-virus.  I came up with 24 threats detected and clicked to clean them up.  All came back with "Cleanup Failed" messages, and all were from my Time Machine backup.  I watched the video on how to removed threats from Time Machine, but I can't find these threat files when I do searches in Time Machine.  Can I just delete a bunch of backups going quite a ways back, and will doing so remove the threats? Thanks in advance for any help.  

:1016065


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    If they are in a Time Machine backup then you don't have to worry about them.  As space for newer backups is required the older backups will be deleted.

    You can exclude the Time Machine volume from being scanned in future scans.  Right-click the white area of the scan you're running and select scan settings, then on the 'Excluded Items' tab add the Time Machine volume.  Example of screen you need to be on:

    Screen Shot 2013-10-29 at 13.05.03.png

    Also see the scanning your mac video on our YouTube channel:

    If you really want to dig into the backup and locate/delete the items (not recommended as it's unncessary) then you will probably have to enable hidden files in Finder (before entering Time Machine).  From Terminal run:

    defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -boolean true
killall Finder

     Then entered Time Machine as locate the items.  Watch/listen to the video below...

    After exiting Time Machine you can hide the normally hidden files with the command:

    defaults delete com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles
killall Finder

    Hope that helps.

    :1016307

     - - - - - - - - - - - -

    Communities Moderator, SOPHOS
    Knowledge Base  |  @SophosSupport  |  Video tutorials
    Remember to like a post.  If a post (on a question thread) solves your question use the 'This helped me' link.

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  • 0

    If they are in a Time Machine backup then you don't have to worry about them.  As space for newer backups is required the older backups will be deleted.

    You can exclude the Time Machine volume from being scanned in future scans.  Right-click the white area of the scan you're running and select scan settings, then on the 'Excluded Items' tab add the Time Machine volume.  Example of screen you need to be on:

    Screen Shot 2013-10-29 at 13.05.03.png

    Also see the scanning your mac video on our YouTube channel:

    If you really want to dig into the backup and locate/delete the items (not recommended as it's unncessary) then you will probably have to enable hidden files in Finder (before entering Time Machine).  From Terminal run:

    defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -boolean true
killall Finder

     Then entered Time Machine as locate the items.  Watch/listen to the video below...

    After exiting Time Machine you can hide the normally hidden files with the command:

    defaults delete com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles
killall Finder

    Hope that helps.

    :1016307

     - - - - - - - - - - - -

    Communities Moderator, SOPHOS
    Knowledge Base  |  @SophosSupport  |  Video tutorials
    Remember to like a post.  If a post (on a question thread) solves your question use the 'This helped me' link.

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