Few people know, but every time we do the backup from the iPhone, iPod or iPad on the computer, iTunes stores large files on the disk that, over time, can take up considerable space, especially if we still have content from devices we don’t even own anymore.
See in this tutorial how to clean the content you no longer use from your Windows or Mac and also to create files different from yours backups current.
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Deleting old and duplicate backups
We have already taught here how to do backup your device in iTunes. If you still don’t know how, check out our tutorial:
➜ [tutorial] How to back up iPhone, iPod or iPad data in iTunes on your computer
What you may not know is where they are. So follow the steps:
Step 1 – open the iTunes program on your Windows or Mac.
Step 2 – look in the top menu for the option “Preferences“, tab “Devices“. If you have been making backups for a long time or have owned several iOS models, you will probably see a list of several backup copies.
Calm down, your list may be much shorter than this
Step 3 – Identify the backups you still use. They are named only with the name of your device. If you have a date together it means that it is an older backup, probably duplicated when you changed system versions or manually archived them (we’ll see how this is done later).
Select the ones you no longer use (those with a date and time in the title) and simply delete them with the key delete or the specific button in the window.

This should be enough to free up a lot of space on your hard drive.
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Archiving backups
You may need, for some reason, to save for the future backup current, without the next ones being overwritten and erasing any information that you consider important. This is possible with the filing, which practically duplicates your backup and creates a new one.
Select your device’s current backup from the same menu Preferences described above and right click on it. Choice Compressed File.

From this moment, when you do the backup in iTunes, it will create a new one, preserving the one you filed.
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