How Do I Start Over With Backups Using Time Machine?

I have a Mac Mini Server running the latest version of Mavericks and OS X Server. I would like to do a full backup of my server. I have no business need to keep the backups currently on the disk. Can I just turn off Time Machine and delete Backups.backupdb through Finder or Terminal? I also want to make sure that when I delete the backups that I can remove them from Trash.

I have done searching on this but have only found information on how to delete backups of certain files or moving the backup disk to another volume.

Solution 1:

If you are backing up to an external disk, the fastest way is to

• disable Time Machine
• erase the backup drive/partition with DiskUtil
• re-enable Time Machine

OTOH you won't loose anything if you keep the old backups for now. As every time slice within TM is a full backup you can still recover up to "now".