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User profile for user: S7ringthing
S7ringthing Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Apple phone fills up C drive with backup

I've followed advice on earlier question (from 2018) to re-locate backup folder from C drive to another drive, using command prompt. However, this hasn't worked. I adapted the names of folders to what is actually on my computer ("Apple" rather than "Apple Computer") but the result was a message in red that the file locations could not be found, paths were invalid etc. It maybe that it's different in Windows 10, or that I've mistyped something, or not understood the significance of " " , but I'm stuck. I've a Dell computer with 120 Gb solid-state C drive, and huge D drive, so want to put the backup on the D drive, and thought I'd found the solution, but not so far. Can anyone help?




Windows, Windows 10

Posted on Sep 21, 2021 1:29 AM

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User profile for user: AppleJen77
AppleJen77
User level: Community Specialist

Posted on Sep 22, 2021 5:01 AM

Hello there, S7ringthing!


Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities! It sounds like you're wanting to change the location being used to backup your iPhone in iTunes on your PC. While you can't have future backups save to an external hard drive, you can locate your current media and information and move those to free up space. Check out this article to Back up and restore your iTunes Library on a PC. Specifically, these steps will allow you to move the library to an external drive and free up space on your computer:


"Back up your library and media files

After you consolidate your media files, you can back up your library and media files to an external drive.

  1. Quit iTunes.
  2. Find your iTunes folder.


3. Right-click on your iTunes folder, then choose Copy.

4. Go to your external hard drive, then right-click and choose Paste."


You can also check out this article to Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch to learn about moving the physical backup to an external drive:


"Delete or copy backups on your Mac or PC

Don't edit, relocate, rename, or extract content from your backup files, because these actions might ruin the files. Use the following sections to make copies of your backups or delete backups that you no longer need.

Copy backups to another location

If you need copies of your backups, you can find the Backup folder and copy the entire folder (not just part of it) to another place, like an external drive or network-storage location.

When you use Time Machine, it automatically copies your Backup folder when you back up the Home folder on your Mac."


Have a great day!

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User profile for user: AppleJen77
AppleJen77
User level: Community Specialist

Sep 22, 2021 5:01 AM in response to S7ringthing

Hello there, S7ringthing!


Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities! It sounds like you're wanting to change the location being used to backup your iPhone in iTunes on your PC. While you can't have future backups save to an external hard drive, you can locate your current media and information and move those to free up space. Check out this article to Back up and restore your iTunes Library on a PC. Specifically, these steps will allow you to move the library to an external drive and free up space on your computer:


"Back up your library and media files

After you consolidate your media files, you can back up your library and media files to an external drive.

  1. Quit iTunes.
  2. Find your iTunes folder.


3. Right-click on your iTunes folder, then choose Copy.

4. Go to your external hard drive, then right-click and choose Paste."


You can also check out this article to Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch to learn about moving the physical backup to an external drive:


"Delete or copy backups on your Mac or PC

Don't edit, relocate, rename, or extract content from your backup files, because these actions might ruin the files. Use the following sections to make copies of your backups or delete backups that you no longer need.

Copy backups to another location

If you need copies of your backups, you can find the Backup folder and copy the entire folder (not just part of it) to another place, like an external drive or network-storage location.

When you use Time Machine, it automatically copies your Backup folder when you back up the Home folder on your Mac."


Have a great day!

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User profile for user: S7ringthing
S7ringthing Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Sep 22, 2021 7:22 AM in response to AppleJen77

Hi AppleJen77,

Thank you for taking the trouble to answer my problem.

However, moving the backup after creating it, and or moving the library and media files, would not have solved the problem, because there was not enough space on the C drive to create a full backup; I ended up with an incomplete backup and 0 bytes of free space on the drive!

Fortunately, I did find a video on YouTube which finally solved the problem, and I now have my iPhone backups going directly to a folder on my larger D drive. I'm posting this so that anybody else with the same problem can fix it too.

Good luck to anyone coming here because they've had the same frustrating experience of their C drive getting over-full because of Apple backups,

Best wishes.


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Apple phone fills up C drive with backup

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