Mobilesync folder and backup contents.

Question

Mobilesync folder and backup contents.

Hi, everyone.

I noticed that my Macbook Pro's internal hard drive has less storage space available than I expected. While looking at the contents of the disk I noticed that one of the folders with the largest size is the Mobilesync folder. This folder's current content is approximately 52 GB in size and it is located at the:

Macintosh HD > Users > Notebook > Library > Application Support > MobileSync > Backup

The only mobile devices I sync with my notebook are my iPhone 3Gs and my iPad 1. For this reason I have to assume this MobileSync folder contains data backed-up from these devices. This folder contains 7 folders inside. Each of this 7 folders is named with a long alphanumeric label.

Are these indeed related to iPhone and iPad back-ups ? In case they are, would it be safe to keep only the latest folder and delete all others ? What is the best way to maintain these back-ups so that they don't take too much space ?

Thank you in advance.

Posted on Aug 20, 2011 10:36 PM

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Answer 1

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King_Penguin

Level 10

334,144 points

Aug 21, 2011 12:15 AM in response to apple_customer

They are the backups for your devices. You should be able to identify which backup is for which device by the date/time that they were created - they should also be listed in iTunes on the Devices tab in Edit > Preferences (which also shows the date/time), and you can delete them from there though you probably want to keep the most recent for each device. There is info about backups and deleting them on this page http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4079

Some of the 7 folders might date back to backups made made prior to updating the iOS on your device, or if you've had previous iPhones and iPods synced to that computer.

In terms of managing them there isn't much else you can do. As far as I am aware you can't change the location of them (i.e. you can't tell iTunes to store them on an external drive instead of your main drive), and the size of them is determined by the content on your devices i.e. what you've got in your apps (they don't store content synced from your computer, so music, films, synced photos aren't in them). You might want to check after each iOS update whether an extra backup has been created for a device and then delete the pre-update backup if you're happy with the update.

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Answer 2

Aug 22, 2011 5:44 PM in response to King_Penguin

Hello, King_Penguin.

Experimenting with the information you shared I think I answered my own post. I found a solution that seems to have worked well.

First I made sure both devices (iPad and iPhone) were sync and up-to-date with my computer. Then I made a back-up of the MobileSync folder to an external drive. After that I erased all back-ups from my computer's internal drive. That saved me the 52 GB of space. Next I connected both devices (one at a time) and made new back-ups. The MobileSync folder now has a recent back-up of my mobile devices and the folder takes a little more than 4 GB of space.

Thanks again for your reply.

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