Why is my backup so HUGE?

[douglaswilliams]

Every time I backup my iPhone, the backup folder grows, a lot. It was taking up my whole hard drive so I deleted it. I've backed up/synched twice since then and it's already over 19GB.

Why is it so huge?

Is this the same for everyone? How big is your backup folder?

 

[rwd hero]

Where is the backup folder held on a mac?

 

[Krevnik]

The backups are usually under "~/Library/Application Support" somewhere on a Mac.

iTunes will create new backups without deleting the existing ones (unless you backup 3-4 times in so many minutes). This lets you restore back to a couple points in history. So that's your growth.

AS for the size itself, it depends on what is in the backup. It backs up your user settings for the iPhone, but also all data stored in all your apps. So if you have an app that stores files for you (like say, Filer, Downloader or something)... all the files in that app are being backed up. VLC/OPlayer/etc videos get backed up as well. A few dozen of these and presto, there's your mysterious 9.5GB backup size.

 

[aleni]

i put a lot of videos in Good Reader, thats why my backup is huge, about 15GB.

i just disabled itunes backup, only enabled it when there is a new firmware update out so i can restore from backup.

saving a huge backup is not a good idea for me because i only have 128GB SSD, it's so expensive and it's very precious

 

[CylonGlitch]

Every time I backup my iPhone, the backup folder grows, a lot. It was taking up my whole hard drive so I deleted it. I've backed up/synched twice since then and it's already over 19GB.

Why is it so huge?

Let me guess, you have at least a 16GB phone, and you have around 9.5GB of installed applications, and data. Think about this, every time it backs up, it keeps a copy of everything on the phone, so the more you have on the phone, the more space on your hard drive it is going to take up.

 

[vincenz]

Maybe you have multiple copies of your backup on there. It sounds normal.