iPhone Backup Cannot be Saved Because of Not Enough Space on Computer

I just followed bsomer's steps as well as the additional tips from others. Still no use, still getting the storage on computer error. We just got 2 new 5SE phones. I even tried to back up the old deactivated phones. Tried other computers. Tried icloud (that one just says "cannot complete backup"). So now I can't back up in any form on any phone or computer. I've been at this for two days.

Me too. Frustrating. I have booked a call from Apple support as my last resort, but I am not optimistic about it. Now I am considering the possibility that I will have to restart my iPhone as new, and start everything from scratch again. Frustrated.

I see this an old post .. but in case anyone has the same issue as I did ! I found the solution.

The "Not enough space" was incorrect error. There was a corrupt file in the backup directory. I found this out by copying the backup directory (Which is in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ on a mac). The copy failed on a particular file saying it couldn't be read or written.

I removed the file and copied the same name file from an earlier back up into the backup directory and it worked !! Huge relief as I had reset my phone !!!

The incorrect error is obviously as the developer only expected that a file write error could only be disc space !

Did anyone ever find a solution to this, because this STILL exists as a problem on an iPhone 6Plus in the year 2016, trying to back up to iTunes under Windows 7. The dialog box from iTunes is: "iTunes could not back up the iPhone "<phone name>" because there is not enough free space on the computer to save the backup.". The iPhone reports (via settings - general - usage) that I have 46GB of data stored on the phone. The computer has 316 GB of free space on the c: drive. I know I got that poor American education but I know 46 is MUCH LESS than 316, so there is plenty of room. (and before anyone chimes in with use WiFi backup, iCloud what-have-you, this is a corporate environment where I must backup via the wire to the computer and store the backup locally.)

FYI: on Windows 7/8/10/etc the file is in C:\users\<userid>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

There was a big hairy named folder with 4 GB of stuff in it. Delete that folder inside the "MobileSync\Backup" folder.

Then asked iTunes to try another "Backup"...

That backup succeeded.

My guess, something about how iTunes tracks a phone's identity to its backup data on the file system, combined with the poor iTunes interpretation of whatever error is actually getting reported... is at fault.

I'm not sure, if you found the answer, but after my Mac crashed attempting to update to the beta version of Sierra, I was lucky enough to pull off my profile from the hard drive. I found after a clean install of El Capitan, I would get the same error trying to backup my IPhone 6s Plus. Apple support was stumped, the console logs shows ITunes error -30 and nothing worked. It wasn't until I pulled the old backup from the older profile, and restored it to that backup location, that I was able to then fully backup my phone again to Itunes. If you have a backup copy from time machine or where ever, I suggest you give that a shot, and see what happens.

Note that to find Minok's suggested folder, it may be necessary to "show hidden folder/files". This was the case for me using Win10.

Tremendous thanks for advice to delete the prior backup file manually. Nothing else would let iTunes proceed with saving all the data and apps on the 5s for transfer to an SE.

Thanks

And to reply to my own post.. thats not a fix. Because now a few weeks later and I'm again getting the "iTunes could not back up... because there is not enough free space on this computer to save the backup" dialog message from iTunes, even though there is 328 GB of free space on the drive, and the 128GB phone only has about 70GB of stuff on it.

Come on Apple.. why is this so friggen hard?

I'm thinking this Apple philosophy of "you don't need to know the details, we will do things for you" they design in results in this sort of behavior - there is some assumption we don't know about that isn't holding true, and because we cannot get meaningful error reporting we, the users, have no way of helping ourselves.

Only thing I can think of, is the fact that iTunes makes incremental backups of the iPhone. therefore if you have a machine that once was used to backup the phone, and it can not find the existing backup, it can not append the data to it.

If this was a clean install, with no previous iTunes library associated with it, (on the mac or the pc) and it tried to do a full backup of the phone and it failed, then I would say I was probably wrong. Only other thing I can think of is the iTunes puts a marker of some sort on the phone that was backed up, identifying the computer and iTunes that it was associated with previously. Which might be why when you sync to a new machine it gives that message saying it was never synced to this machine before.

If possible (again this worked for me but dont know if it will for others) is to find an older copy of the backup of the phone and put it in the correct location where the backups go (for mac or pc), then try and back up again, and see what happens.

thank u everyone for this very useful info. i have been trying everything from these past few days and nothing worked. i contacted apple support and they told me that i will need 34 gb of space to back up my 64gb iPhone( it has 30 gb space free) and i was sure there was something wrong somewhere.

I have had this issue on our iMac backing up My iPhone, my wife's iPhone and our ipads. Error message not enough memory to complete backups to the iMac. Plenty of memory, we have been troubleshooting this issue for months without success. I then download Imazing program to try backup and this also failed, however I noticed a warning from Norton that part of backup was being deleted because it found a trojan zbot. After this happen the the backup fails both in tunes and in Imazing. By erasing the prior backups in the folder ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ and turning off antivirus Norton problem solved. I suspect norton found fragments had a pattern of bits that matched a pattern that occurs in files that have a particular piece of viral code. Did a full scan of my system and not virus found. Backup now successful on all devices and with both programs.

I hope this helps others with similar issues

Dr. Aaronson

How much free space is there on your computer, how large is the backup.

lungdoctor wrote:

Did a full scan of my system and not virus found. Backup now successful on all devices and with both programs.

I hope this helps others with similar issues

Dr. Aaronson

As there are no (as in none) viruses for OS X your result is not surprising at all.

I have had this issue on our iMac backing up My iPhone, my wife's iPhone and our ipads. Error message not enough memory to complete backups to the iMac. Plenty of memory, we have been troubleshooting this issue for months without success. I then download Imazing program to try backup and this also failed, however I noticed a warning from Norton that part of backup was being deleted because it found a trojan zbot. After this happen the the backup fails both in tunes and in Imazing. By erasing the prior backups in the folder ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ and turning off antivirus Norton problem solved. I suspect norton found fragments had a pattern of bits that matched a pattern that occurs in files that have a particular piece of viral code. Did a full scan of my system and not virus found. Backup now successful on all devices and with both programs.

I hope this helps others with similar issues

Dr. Aaronson

Try turning off windows defender if you are using windows 10.

For me, closing iTunes and opening it usually works. Occasionally, I need to do that more than once.

Obviously in my case, it's a bug, as there is lots of free space. But iTunes other bugs that irritate me.

(This site has the most irritating way of moving the cursor when I hit the back-key to edit words, sometimes making it impossible to edit without starting over).