I use a 60GB SSD on my main computer and banned all other hard drives to keep it as quiet as possible. All the big files like music, videos and most of the user documents of the whole family are stored on m Windows Home Server.
Until recently my Windows 7 was living quite happily on the 60GB main partition, until – well – until iTunes became too greedy with space. Sometime between my purchase of the third iOS device (a new iPad 2) and the arrival of iOS 5 the space iTunes needed on my c:\ drive just went through the roof. Over 12GB and still growing.
The main culprit was easily found by looking at the iTunes files that are stored locally. A very good tool to analyse disk space in a graphical form is WinDirStat.
iTunes stores most of its local files in C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer; in a sub-directory called MobileSync\Backup it stores various versions of various iOS devices of the household. Further, prior to the iOS upgrade it makes a backup of the iOS 4 in the sub-directory iTunes\iPad Software Updates (or similar depending on the exact device) – this is another 750mb per device!
Unfortunately there are no settings inside iTunes to change the location of the backup folders. Other posts in newsgroups suggested creating a NTFS junction point or hard link with tools like junction or the mklink command. But this did not help me as I do not have a second hard drive in my main computer. The backup data needed to go onto a network drive.
Whilst mklink can create as well a directory symbolic link iTunes did not like its entire directory structure moved onto the network (I tried it and iTunes looked like a fresh install).
So after some experimenting I found a solution by moving only the backup folder itself onto the net:
- Close iTunes and kill all remaining iTunes processes (iTunesHelper.exe, iPodService.exe) using the task manager
- Locate the iTunes backup directory. On my Windows 7 this is C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync. There is only one subdirectory called Backup holding all iOS backups.
- Create a suitable space for this directory on a network drive, I created \\servername\users\username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer
- Move the entire contents of local folder MobileSync to the network folder under AppleComputer. The sub-directory MobileSync should then no longer exist locally
- Open a cmd shell as administrator and navigate into the local folder C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer
- Create a symbolic directory link using the mklink command:
mklink /d MobileSync “\\servername\users\username\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync”.
When you now navigate using explorer through the local Apple Computer file structure you can follow the symbolic link and it looks as you are still on the C: drive.
You can now start iTunes again, it should behave as before but create the backup files on your network. I did this a few days ago and my iTunes seems to behave normally, creating new and additional files on the network drive. I have not tried restoring a back-up, worst-case I could always move the backup files back locally and do a restore from there.
I moved as well the files in iTunes\iPad (or iPod) Software Updates onto the net and deleted the local versions. Should I ever need to restore my iOS 4 I could simply move them back locally.
Excellent tutorial! I run all Linux and run a Win7 VM guest under VM workstation 12 to handle the few things that are Win only that I use.
I wanted to store the iPad backup on my 1tb storage that is ext4 / Samb and of course mklink /J wanted a local volume. (smoke was coming out of the ears on that one – why I run 99% Linux).
I am running Samba on the Ubuntu host box to share storage with the Win7 VM and the above tutorial worked just fine in moving the MobileSync folder to the the Linux ext4 Samba share.
Cheers!
Looks great for Windows. I’m still on XP Pro which does not support the mlink command. I have attempted the move of the iTunes backup to our NAS device but the Junction command fails as it looks like the disk has to be local to the machine.
Would appreciate any advice.
Nick
Good post.. Saved lot of time in keeping my C Drive clean.. Thanks.
Great post, thanks a bunch. Definitely helped with clearing up about 20 GB of space on my 100GB SSD.
Great suggestion, thanks! It worked well.
For those of you having troubles, here are some clarifications that I found after executing this technique:
1) If you cannot find the ITunes Services in Task Manager then download and use Process Explorer which quite easily displays the exes of all running services.
2) Like others here, I was relinking the MobileSync folder to an external drive (e.g D:\). This step in the original article did not work for me. I replaced the network address in the original step with my external path e.g D:\MobileSync\. However when I clicked on the linked folder, Windows would complain that it cannot find the directory (even though the path to the link existed). I found that the command line did not like the speechmarks and as soon as they were removed it worked perfectly. I could double click the linked folder in explorer and it would take me to the correct location. Note that your target path probably shouldn’t have any spaces or else this won’t work.
3) After trying an explict backup (Right click the iPhone, Choose backup), iTunes would still report to me that there was not enough space to do the backup and display the current space free on my C:\. I can take it that iTunes is simply built to calculate the space on C:\ at this step, even though the location of the MobileSync folder was changed. Ignore this and the next warning that you will loose files if you continue without the backup. When you ignore this and press continue iTunes will start backing up anyway and if the backup is being routed to the external hard drive then it should complete successfully anyway.
4) After back up everything worked fine, the back up files were on my external hard drive. I then preceeded to update to the lastest OS version. It did another “mini backup” and returned with an error. I ignored the error and simply continued and the update/iPhone restore worked perfectly.
So overall, if you ignore any weird errors popped up by iTunes when using this technique you should be fine. Just make sure that the backup actually occurs on your external device.
Thanks for this nice way around my c harddrive just having 4.5 gb free.
Now my backup is running after this 75sec change
Thanks for that, i have the same issue with the same setup… great to know that symbolic link command
I just wanted to say thank you for this! Found this site from a comment you posted here I’ve been juggling the last gb of my C drive for the last few weeks, and like you, found the culprit to be iTunes!
First off I am using Vista. As a programming noob, even with your excellent instructions, I had a few false starts trying to implement this work-a-round, but eventually did get it functioning exactly as you described = ) My hitches were:
Step 1 – did not have iTuneshelper.exe app running, but found under the ‘Services’ tab of ‘Task Manager’:AppleMobileDevice and iPodHelper, which I right mouse click menu /stopped.
Step 6 – once again, quite possible my lack of programming how-to, but found this step a little confusing because where you put:
mklink /d MobileSync “\\servername\users…
I used exactly this:
mklink /d MobileSync “d:\users…
I am just linking to a partition on my hard drive though, which may explain the difference?
Anyways thanks mightily for this!
I tried moving my Temp directory as well. I figured it might be trying to store in Temp first. That didn’t have any affect.
Oh, well. Thanks for trying to assist.
No, that didn’t work either…
Hmmm… that didn’t seem to work for me. It looks like it’s still checking the size of the other partition. I think I might try moving everything and symlinking the parent directory.
I’ll let you know…
Thanks for this! Saved me the trial and error of trying to symlink the entire folder.
I tried your tutorial but i didn’t use a network drive but a local drive instead. Shouldn’t matter I’d say. But it didn’t work. Itunes kept complaining about lack of space threatening me I will loose my media files if I upgrade my 4.3.5 version to 5.0.1 because it still checks for space on the C: drive even though the backup will go to the symbolic directory link. So I wonder how could it work for you?
Works like a charm. Very glad my C drive is no longer bloated by iTunes backups.
Many thanks for sharing the trick!
Hi Frederik. Thanks so much for this. I had the same issue as you with a smaller SSD drive. Never used the command line before and was trying to move the backup to a second drive e: instead of a network drive. After a few trials and errors I seemed to get it to work and the shortcut was created in the correct space but when i click on the shortcut in the C: drive, it says “c:\users….\MobileSync is not available. The filename, directory name or volume name is incorrect.”
When I look at properties for the shortcut and click open file location, it opens up MobileSync folder on the E: drive as it should?? My folder structure is fairly straightforwards c:/user/Ged/AppData/Roaming/Apple Computer and its the same on the E: drive. I entered the following into the cmd prompt mklink /d MobileSync “\e:\users\Ged\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync”
Any clues as to what I did wrong thanks? Thanks again..Ged
i had exactly the same problem…
that was really helpful, thank you Frederik Lagrange (:
it works for my iphone! 😉
You are a life saver ! Thank you very much.
Great instructions. I was in exactly the same boat as you, with my own 60GB SSD HD and finding iTunes filling it up worryingly fast. I now have my backups on my network drive. Thanks!!
Thank you for these clear instructions. It helped me out immensely.
The original 40GB SSD drives that first came on the market are now no match for 32GB iTunes backups.
Apple should definitely add an option in iTunes for an alternate location for these huge folders.
Thank you! This helped me out big time, as I am also running an SSD and don’t want the backup data to fill up the drive.
Awsome post!
Great post and this saved me! Thanks for making it!
Hello –
I followed through Step 4, but I can say that it did not “move” the Backup folder, it copied it. I am now not sure what you mean starting with Step 5. I am fairly proficient but I was wondering if you might walk me through it in more detail, assuming that I know not as much! I do not know what a ‘cmd shell’ is or how I would Navigate through to local folder. I also dont’ know how to create a symbolic directory link. Also, I moved the Backup folder to my external hard drive (G:). I hope this is the same as putting it on a network drive. I have not been able to download iOS 5 due to the iTunes error message that there is not enough space on my drive for my iTunes Media. Thank you in advance for any help you might offer.
Jeanette