Backup files on PC becomes too big, how to delete files not needed and where to delete them?

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Level 1

6 points

Backup files on PC becomes too big, how to delete files not needed and where to delete them?

I used iTune to manage iPhone and iPad. iTune will back up content of both devices. I found that recently the backup files become too many and used up a significant amount of my PC harddisk. How do I go about to delete old backup files to release harddisk space? Thanks.

iPhone 3GS, iOS 4.3.2

Posted on Apr 21, 2011 10:54 PM

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Answer 1

diesel vdub

Level 7

22,178 points

Apr 22, 2011 4:01 AM in response to tai loy

Backups for iPods, iPhones, and iPads are fairly small in size... 60-70mb approximately.

I seriously doubt they are filling your hard drive or using a significant amount of space.

You can remove backups via iTunes

Edit > Preferences > Devices

Select the backup or backups and delete them.

Here's the Apple support article about backups: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1766

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Answer 2

myxptlyk

Level 1

4 points

Feb 23, 2014 9:51 PM in response to diesel vdub

I know this post is old..but it's not completely true. Backups for my iPhone are ~12 gigs. It all seems to depend on the amount of pictures & video I have. I just cleared out > 40Gigs of space by deleting 4 backups.

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Answer 3

May 21, 2015 9:21 PM in response to tai loy

This is an old post but I am having the same problem syncing to a laptop with just 128GB main C drive, Windows 8. I backed up my iphone and ipad and 20gb were used up. Can I tell itunes to put this in an external drive I used to point itunes to where my music and videos are on an external F drive? Why aren't the other files that itunes is backing up from my iphone and ipad in that folder I pointed to on my F external drive?

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

272,881 points

Jun 20, 2015 4:52 PM in response to nodaicrag

This technique can be used to move the iOS backup data to another locally connected NTFS drive.

Relocate iOS device backups

Make a new folder called MobileSync at the root of the drive you want the backup data to live on, e.g. as D:\MobileSync
Use Windows Explorer to move current Backup folder at <SystemDrive>\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup into the folder you just made. If the backup folder is large this may take some time.
To make iTunes look for the data in the new location copy the text below, open a command prompt, right-click to paste in the command, edit the drive letter/path if needed, and then press <Enter>.
```
MkLink /J "%AppData%\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup" "D:\MobileSync\Backup"
```

If you want the backup elsewhere replace D:\MobileSync accordingly.

Note that while this method works for iOS device backups it cannot be used to redirect sections of the media library.

tt2

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Answer 5

Jun 30, 2015 8:06 PM in response to turingtest2

Thank you turingtest2. However, I can't get it to quite work. When I bring up my command prompt, it says c:\Users\MyName and I paste the link to point to my external drive. But then it gives me a message on command prompt: "Cannot create file when that file already exists." Any other ideas to get iTunes to look at my external drive? Thank you.

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