Purging file from Git repo failed, unable to create new backup

I had the same problem and the answer above didn't fix it. There was no .git/refs/original/ directory left. The solution for me was to delete the .git/packed-refs file.

Use this command to remove original backup:

git update-ref -d refs/original/refs/heads/master

Here is gist I used to filter-branch my git repo: https://gist.github.com/k06a/25a0214c98bc19fd6817

You have already performed a filter-branch operation. After filter-branch, Git keeps refs to the old commits around, in case something goes wrong.

You can find those in .git/refs/original/…. Either delete that directory and all files within, or use the -f flag to force Git to delete the old references.

git filter-branch -f \
--index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch Rakefile' HEAD