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Free Up Disk Space: How to Delete Old iPhone and iPad Backups

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Extra disk space is once a gain a commodity thanks to small solid state drives and large iPhoto libraries. If you need to clear off space on your Mac for OS X Lion, more photos or just to have some breathing room; we’ve found a great way to free up disk space — delete old iPhone and iPad backup files.

Everytime you back your iPhone or iPad up to your computer, you are creating a decent size file with all the important info from your device. It is great to have one of these backups on hand, but many users have multiple backups on their disks that take up tons of space. We were able to recover about 8GB on one machine and 15GB on another — just be removing old, out of date iPhone and iPad backups.

How to Remove iPhone and iPad Backups

1. Open iTunes

2. Click on iTunes -> Preferences (or Edit -> Preferences on Windows)

3. Click on Devices

delete iPhone backups

How to delete iPhone backups in iTunes.

4. Highlight your old backups (leave your most current backup)

5. Click Delete Backup.

That’s all there is to it. Deleting these old backups is an easy way to free up a noticeable amount of storage space without choosing which pictures to keep, sorting through music and spending na afternoon hunting for large files.

If you need to track down more files, we suggest using GrandPerspective. This free app shows you a visual representation of your drive usage, and allows you to click on large files for further investigation or deletion.

9 Comments

9 Comments

  1. Mjvc

    03/25/2012 at 10:08 am

    Thanks!

  2. Dave Wyman

    05/30/2012 at 6:32 pm

    Awesome post! Thanks.

  3. BG

    06/25/2012 at 7:53 pm

    Thanks alot!

  4. Haikal

    06/29/2012 at 5:22 am

    Thank you so much. It is very helpful. :)

  5. Blair

    07/05/2012 at 3:05 pm

    Hello,
    Was wondering if you have a optimization tool that you like. I feel like my macbook is running so slow and would love to have a recommendation. I downloaded one optimization software program and it ended up being a total rip off. Thanks! Also, this article was helpful. Thank you.

  6. Randy Gates

    08/15/2012 at 7:39 pm

    What crap I gave my old phone to a friend and he is stuck with my itunes account on it that he can’t access without my password. I can’t delete it your website really helped. Daaa

  7. javier

    12/05/2012 at 6:35 pm

    MY GOD FINALLY SOMEONE WITH KNOWLEDGE!!!! THANKS SO MUCH

  8. Dennis Larsen

    04/10/2014 at 10:30 pm

    Thanks a lot! Freed up 14 GB of space!

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