Iphone Camputer
Carey Jangam
my family iphones are backing up to my laptop and on icloud, how do I stop local backups and free disc space on my laptop? I donlt have itunes installed, the folder appears empty but reports 93GB of used space. Icloud back ups on their own will be fine? I need that space back on my laptop.
The reason I suggested not deleting directly from File Explorer is that I did not want to corrupt your iTunes installation. Since you have already removed the visible backups in iTunes I would delete the folder you mentioned above. It will go to your recycle bin anyway so it can be restored just in case (unlikely). Don't delete anything else. Reboot the computer after you delete it and recheck.
Do you have actual music or other media in iTunes now? If not I would remove iTunes from your computer using Settings > Apps > Installed Apps > selecting iTunes and Uninstall. Reboot the computer and then reinstall iTunes so you get a clean install. If you do have music/media files I can walk you through the process of saving the iTunes library prior to removing iTunes. And BTW, just to test I backed up my old iPhone 7 to iTunes on my W10 computer and it created one file/subfolder (on the location above) with 136 MBs, 1,898 files, and 256 folders. Deleting it again took seconds as all I had to do is delete the one file/subfolder under that path. And the reason deleting backups is fast is that in contrast to what you were previously told nothing gets deleted from your PC when you delete a file, all that happens is that that file/folder is removed from the list of valid/active files and the hard disk location is made available for new data. That is why recovery programs are able to recover deleted data until new data get written into that location and why the FBI/NSA required safe deleting, they write over and over on that location to place new data where the old data was thus actually wiping out the old 1s and 0s.... so deleting should be very fast.
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I didn't have itunes installed, so I reinstalled it just now and when I look at preferences and devices, it shows me 4 devices which have had backups done, none of which are phones we still use. So I am wondering if the data in that apple folder is actually "historic".
I have a MacBook Pro, a W10 PC and a W11 PC. I am equally proficient with Macs and PCs. Macs use Finder (the File Explorer equivalent) to do backups of iDevices. PCs use iTunes. My W10 PC has the latest iTunes installed although I seldom use it anymore. I did not install iTunes in in W11 PC but it is the same. I used to do backups into the W10 PC but I have migrated my main computing to the MBP and I now do backups with the Mac. Nonetheless I still had 5 backups in the W10 PC, an iPad backup and 4 iPhone backups. I deleted them all as they were old (2021) and I no longer needed them. I politely disagree with Lawrence above, deleting the 5 backups was nearly instant, a few seconds only, and they all disappeared from iTunes and the PC.
I now show an empty folder since I just deleted my old iTunes backups. You however should see the backups that you still have on your PC. Select any of them and right click it, then click on Properties and you will see the size of the backup. Note that you cannot (and should not) delete the backups from File Explorer, go to iTunes > Edit (on the left top menu) > Preferences > Devices and delete them from there.
The reason you may not see any files under a folder is likely because the folder contains hidden files. You can unhide all the hidden files in W11 by opening File Explorer, clicking This PC, from the View menu above select Show, and then Hidden Items. The procedure is different on W10. Be very careful however as you can very easily mess up your computer if you delete hidden files that are actually needed by the OS. I would not delete any files that are hidden if you don't know what you are doing, they are hidden for a purpose.
OK I did that - but the folder still contains about 22GB of data. So I explored as you suggested in your supplementary answer and there is a folder I didn't create at this location : ThisPC>Windows (C:)>Users>[username]>Apple>MobileSync>Backup. That has one hidden file, with a very long file name, which when I show it has many individual sub folders and is 27.6GB in size.
OK I have deleted that folder (I checked that there was nothing else in the folder first) and I have uninstalled iTunes as suggested, as I don't ever use it on my laptop, my music library, which actually I don't access often through apple music anyway is on my iPhone. That has freed up a considerable amount of laptop disc space which was the objective - thanks to you and everyone else who responded to me and for your interest in helping others, much appreciated.
I use my iphone 4s for taking work related photos of products, and it is easy for me to take 300 photos in one sitting. Every time I connect my iphone to my pc (windows 7) with a USB cable and try to transfer the images, I manage to get a few files transferred before the error messError Moving File or Folder: A device attached to the system is not functioning"
- Itunes does not automatically start when I plug the phone into the pc. This stopped working after updates were done earlier this year, which were so detrimental that I ended up with apple replacing my iphone.
- Every time I plug the iphone into the computer, I get a message that "This device can perform faster if I plug into high speed port". This is a new message, started a couple of months ago. I have checked, and according to my computer, all of the USB ports are high speed. ???
How old is the computer? Is Windows up to date? Actually, any Windows 7 computer should have USB 2.0 ports on itso I don't see why you should be getting this error unless you are connected to a USB hub instead of directly to the computer. If you are not using Windows Import for the photos, what are you using? Are you an administrator on that computer? iTunes can be set not to automatically start when you plug the phone in, but it sounds as if you have a driver issue for the USB port.
You can try and uninstall and then reinstall iTunes on the computer. Do this with the phone disconnected from the computer and follow the instructions in this support document exactly Once you have reinstalled iTunes, reboot the computer and connect the iPhone. It should download the latest USB driver for the iPhone. See if this helps.
The computer is two years old, and windows is up to date. I am connecting my usb to the ports on the side of my laptop. Unfortunately, I am manually copying 4-6 images at a time from my iphone into a desktop folder via windows explorer. If I try to do the whole kit and caboodle at once, it will copy a few, then crash. When I restart, it will continue to copy the same files that were already transferred, before crashing again, becoming an exercise in futility. If I do a few at a time, at least I am gradually getting the images I need before I get the error message and have to start the whole process again.
Have you tried all of the USB ports on the computer? It sounds like there might be a problem with the one you are using. There is also the possibility of a corrupt photo file that is causing the crash. If you connect the phone to the computer and rightt-click on it and select Import the photos, what happens? If you transfer these few pictures and then delete them from the phone and then continue, will it work as designed?
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