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piatti

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 9, 2010
819
0
USA
I don't see why backups are needed. What problems could there be if I deleted these?
 
If something goes wrong with your phone, you'll have to set it up as new, you won't be able to just restore from a backup and get your stuff back.
 
How do you delete everything except the latest backups for each of your phone?
 
How do you delete everything except the latest backups for each of your phone?

I have a Mac right now so not sure about Windows OS.. Here's how to on a Mac

Launch iTunes >> Click iTunes >> Click Preferences >> Click the *Devices* tab >> Highlight desired BACKUP >> Click Delete Backup .... Done!
 
I have a Mac right now so not sure about Windows OS.. Here's how to on a Mac

Launch iTunes >> Click iTunes >> Click Preferences >> Click the *Devices* tab >> Highlight desired BACKUP >> Click Delete Backup .... Done!

Wrong. They don't have dated backups any more. You have to copy a backup to another directory you choose, if you want to keep it.
 
Wrong. They don't have dated backups any more. You have to copy a backup to another directory you choose, if you want to keep it.

Really? On my other computer my iPhone backups were consuming something like 50GB. I deleted all but the very latest and it's down to a more reasonable 4GB
 
Really? On my other computer my iPhone backups were consuming something like 50GB. I deleted all but the very latest and it's down to a more reasonable 4GB

If you haven't updated iTunes, then yes that would be true. I thought it was pretty stupid when Apple went with this approach (overwriting backups). Ostensibly, it was to prevent the very behavior you talked about (having 50 GB in backups).
 
How do you delete everything except the latest backups for each of your phone?

Go to this screen in iTunes Prefs/Devices and you should see one entry for each iOS device you are syncing. If you have older entries for iOS devices you no longer own you can delete them from the list. But I don't know of any way to delete part of the data from a particular iOS device backup.

If there is only the one (current) iOS device listed and you still want to delete it to clear off the space on your drive, you could use iCloud to backup your device and just not backup through iTunes at all.

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The most obvious and easiest answer (assuming your phone is working well currently) is to delete all old backups and create a new backup immediately after. Chances are your phone isn't going to crash and burn in the next 20 minutes, yes? An even better option is to just use iCloud backup.
 
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