where does itunes save my backup for my ipad and my wifes Iphone?

diesel - you need to get a life instead of berating folks. Google is our friend. It points us to answers to our questions. Sometimes new questions are wriggled from our brains as we read these old answers. If the thread is not closed to new replies do NOT berate users for taking advantage of any avenue open to them. So again, please get a life and stop trolling old worn out threads just so you can hop up and down all over someone and feel superior. Maybe if you follow this advice won't have to pop a gasket because someone is reviving a old topic.

Thanks for this - really helpful as it enabled me to rule out a lack of space as being the cause of the problem in iTunes backup.

While it has enabled me to access a 2TB drive to backup a 64GB iPad 2 it still did not fix the problem

iTunes 'could not back up the iPad (64GB) because there is not enough free space on the computer to save the backup

I've tried everything suggested on the Apple Support HT203271 including the Lockdown Folder (HT203887).

(The error message clearly has nothing to do with a space problem but is something else altogether.)

See Make a split library portable and the box at the bottom that describes how to relocate iOS backups properly. I believe iTunes may sometimes give that error when the existing backup is corrupt in some particular fashion.

tt2

Thanks - this is what I had already done through mnanni's post.

I found in the related post: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6494052

the suggestion to turn off Find my iPhone - but this also did not solve the problem

Also deleted / renamed all previous backup attempts so if a previous backup is corrupted it is not accessible - also did not solve the problem.

Perhaps the iPad itself has a corruption rather than the backup??

The error message pop-up included an Information button which led me here:

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201263

so I've proceeded down the Recovery Path - Update option

That has enabled me to force through the latest update to ios 9.2 successfully and data on the iPad is intact.

Then attempted a backup, having renamed the previous (failed) backups - but the problem persists - unable to back up the iPad to my computer - ostensibly due to insufficient space on a disk with over 1.6TB available.

Message re failure appears when synchronising apps

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201263

Will it backup to iCloud?

tt2

I don't use cloud for backup - want the data on my equipment - so only have 5GB free space - not enough to backup

iOS backups don't include apps or media, so might not need more than the free 5Gb. It might be a workaround if there is no other way to backup the device to a computer. See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device for advice on extracting media if needed.

tt2

The failing backups take over 6GB on the computer and the last good backup (July) was almost 8GB.

Will think about doing a full recovery and restore from July backup - apps and photos will reload from the cloud and email from ISP mail server and data in some of the APPs can be transferred direct from the Apps window in iTunes - so not likely to lose anything critical.

Spent far to much time on this already.

Really appreciate your time to provide expertise and comment during the holiday season - Happy New Year

Once a while I am facing the issue where iTunes tells me to delete the corrupted backup files. The worst thing is that there is no way to do that on iTunes app. I have to navigate to the folder which contains the backup. The nightmare just begin. It is not easy to identify which backup folder is the right one to delete because the folder's name has some kind of code.

I hope Apple iTunes division will look into this to allow user easily delete backup files. This can let user to manage old backups and delete them to regain more disk space.

You can delete Backups from iTunes. Go to iTunes>Preferences>click on Devices, and all of your iTunes backups are listed.

Cheers,

GB