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"not enough free space" when there's over 100GB

Whenever I sync my 256GB iPhone X through iTunes on my Mac Mini 2014, I get a error dialog box that says


The iPhone “Iron Curtain's iPod” cannot be synced because there is not enough free space to hold all of the items in the iTunes library (additional 9.57 GB required).


when there's about 102.22GBs of free space. Why is this happening?


EDIT: I tried rebooting the iPhone and restoring a backup but I'm still getting the error message.

iPhone X, iOS 12

Posted on Apr 26, 2019 5:57 AM

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5 replies

Apr 26, 2019 10:44 AM in response to Samuel S Abram

See Relocate iOS device backups for a way to move the backup data off the system drive (which is still the one checked for free space). Review the rest of the Make a split library portable user tip for advice on organizing the library on external storage.


A recent change to the forum software has messed up the formatting of the user tip somewhat. The terminal command should look like this:


ln -s "/Volumes/<New Volume>/MobileSync/Backup" "/Users/<User>/Library/Application Support/MobileSync"


Where <New Volume> is the name of the volume you want to store the data on, and <User> is the name of your profile. If there are spaces in the path wrap with quotes or escape with backslash. It is probably easier to type in ln -s then drag and drop the two folders onto the command line in turn.


tt2

Apr 26, 2019 7:05 AM in response to Samuel S Abram

A possible explanation is that the routine that checks the free space is, for example, only looking at 16 bits from a 32 bit value and is thus not reading the free space correctly. Paradoxically adding some more content to the drive rather than freeing up the suggested amount might work, but I don't know how much you would have to add to fix it.


tt2

"not enough free space" when there's over 100GB

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