I have a ReadyNAS Duo [X-RAID], which someone set up for me some years ago. At the time they set it as a backup for Time Machine, however my Mac hard drive had to be replaced and I was unable to access the backups after that, so I went to using a USB drive instead.
I want to remove TM from the NAS and delete the backups, to free up space for media files, without reformatting the entire drive and reloading all my media files. I looked to delete the sparsebundle, but it has a no entry symbol by it (presumably as it was linked to my old drive). I have seen a post that says to set up a TMtemp in shares, log into the C drive through CIFS and move the sparsebundle to the temp folder and delete in frontview. I haven't tried this yet (am a techphobe). I noticed that in the shares list, there's a backup which has a delete button next to it. If I delete this, will it remove all the old backups and presumably I have to stop TM to free up the space (not sure how to do this).
I tried once before to remove the sparsebundle by deleting it when logged in as admin via AFP and first time got the spinning wheel of death and then the next time it seemed to take ages to do nothing, so I stopped it. I've no idea how to use SSH.
If I just delete the backup in frontview, then disable TM in frontview, would that not get rid of the sparsebundle and give me space back?
You can disable Time Machine on ReadyNAS and locate the sparsebundle and delete it.
Each Mac client using Time Machine can delete the sparsebundle image used by that client by going into the ReadyNAS share on the ReadyNAS device.
It should give the space taken back as free space but logging in through AFP using ReadyNAS as user should be quicker you can find the sparsebundle under /c/.timemachine.
To disable TM you can just uncheck the box. You can use this as reference Easy Time machine setup.
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