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

Hello,

 

When I come to sync my iPhone with my computer it tells me that my backup cannot be saved because there is not enough space on my computer. I have tried EVERYTHING I could possibly find on the internet to solve it but I can't. This included using a different USB port and cable, trying to sync it with a different computer (I actually got a new one and it still won't work), updating softwares on both my Mac and my phone, resetting my devices, deleting backups both on iTunes and manually in Finder and even calling Apple support! (They told me to back up using iCloud but that won't work either. Before I did it we hung up because I knew it would take some time.)

 

I've started to believe it is an error in the phone's operating system (iOS 7) as some features are notably different like when opening an app or a folder: instead of zooming into it or make it appear from the center of the screen a fading effect brings up the app or the folder, which I think is pretty weird. Restoring it would be the perfect solution, but I need a backup first!

 

This has been going on for some time, so any help is appreciated.

 

Thanks!

iPhone 5, iOS 7.1

Posted on Aug 14, 2014 6:50 PM

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

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  • by Minok,

    Minok Minok Sep 14, 2016 3:31 PM in response to Minok
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 14, 2016 3:31 PM in response to Minok

    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.

  • by Pirho,

    Pirho Pirho Sep 14, 2016 3:46 PM in response to Minok
    Level 1 (16 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 14, 2016 3:46 PM in response to Minok

    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.

  • by Tag5,

    Tag5 Tag5 Sep 17, 2016 1:15 AM in response to steveald
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 17, 2016 1:15 AM in response to steveald

    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.

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