February 3, 2009 6:30 AM PST
Are Old iPhone Update Files Hogging Your Disk Space?
Thanks to an apparent lack of clean-up on iTunes' part, many users have oodles of disk space that is being unnecessarily occupied by old iPhone and/or iPod touch software updates.
As described reader Doug Eldred:
"I have 10 files, ranging from 150 MB to 250 MB for my iPod touch, and much smaller files for two other iPods, one of which I no longer own. They total well over 2 GB! Now, if I really need to keep restore files back to version 1.0, I will, but I'd be happy to pitch the older ones."
You can check for these old files in
- Mac: ~/Library/iTunes/iPod Software Updates
- Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates
- Windows Vista: iPhone: C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates
Removing these files can not only save disk space, but also can alleviate some update-process isues.
"C:" is small on my computer and I've configured the D&S directories to be on another, much larger file system (E:). Nearly all the other Windows programs I'm using are able to find the latter, but Apple's software resolutely wants to use C:
Thanks for the tip regarding left-over restore files, but I still need to get the application's data files off the root file system. Any advice would be most welcome!