Deleting old back ups, v10

Hi - I'm backing up to an external hard drive, keeping 2 copies, then deleting the earliest when I add the third back up. However, I get the message' Cannot delete...it is being used by another person or programme. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again'.


There's nothing else running, so could someone help, please? Thanks

 

There's some inherent wonkies in windows that let this happen. Sometimes the program that's holding onto the file is the the instance of explorer that you are using to try to delet the file.

If you want, you can instal file Unlocker, made for just such occassions and it's free:

http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

 

Or you can try deleting in Safe Mode.

 

Thank you, I'll give it a go. Funnily enough, I just tried again, after turning the external drive off and on, and it let me delete 2 items, then locked again.

 

Make yourself a BartPE cd - and include the True Image Plug-in for more features. But just the plain BartPE cd will come in handy in more ways than one and it will let you pick and choose which files to delete.

 

I found this problem and solved it by disabling Norton Protected Files.
The Protected Files part of Norton was being copied across to my
second hard drive which I use for images.

Check this if you are using Norton Anti-Virus.

Hope this helps.

 

I don't have NAV. That happens so often to me. As shieber mentioned, I have been using unlocker without any problem. I found that Unlocker was a very convenient tool. The use of unlocker is a lot easier than deleting files under safemode or after booting with other bootdisks.
Sarutaro

 

And easier than making a BartPE cd ;-)