There is Not Enough Hard Drive Space to Back Up My iPhone

With over 1 billion iPhones in the world today, the iPhone has become a digital repository for our memories and interactions with loved ones, friends, work colleagues, business clients, and anyone in our social circles.

Over the years, Apple has significantly increased the amount of storage offered on all their iPhone models.

Consumers have happily taken advantage of having more available iPhone storage and it’s now commonplace today to regularly retain and store copious amounts of photos, videos, text messages, and other personal data on our iPhones or iPads.

In previous decades, people would often print out and store hard copies of photos in scrapbooks, whereas today all our photos are stored digitally either on our iPhone, on our computer, or in the cloud.

iPhone users also regularly keep large amounts of text messages and photo attachments in the Messages app on their device. Sometimes the text messages date back for many years and contain important communications between family, friends, and business colleagues.

With the large amount of storage capacity offered on today’s iPhones and iPads, it’s becoming the norm that users often have more storage capacity on their iPhone than they do on their computer!

Most people today also upgrade their iPhones more regularly than they do their computers. Over time, this often leads to the scenario where the capacity of hard drive space on a user’s PC or Mac is far less than the amount of data on their iPhone.

As a result, when a user tries to back up their iPhone on their computer they often get an error message that says there is not enough room to complete the backup of the iPhone or iPad.

Apple’s current iPhones, including the recent iPhone 15 Pro Max model, offer up to 1 TB of storage! This is often more storage capacity than the typical hard drive on someone's Windows or Mac computer.

Here at Decipher Tools software, we make software programs that take computer hard drive space limitations into consideration. For example, our popular software program Decipher TextMessage that lets users save and print iPhone text messages as a PDF, has a special back up option to back up just their text messages and not their entire device! This is helpful for users that don't have enough hard drive space to make a full backup of their iPhone on their computer.

How much space do I need on my computer to back up my iPhone?

The amount of space you need on your computer to back up your iPhone all depends on how much data you have on your iPhone. This is unique to everyone's own personal device.

How to check how much space you're currently using on your iPhone:

Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.

Here you will see how much space is used on your iPhone and also a break down of which apps currently take up the most space on your device. The amount of used space on the iPhone will be a bit higher than what your backup size would be, since not everything stored on the iPhone is backed up. For example, the iOS operating system files itself is not backed up, nor is content downloaded from the app store.

How do I check to see how much available hard drive space is on my computer?

Whether you have enough room on your computer hard drive to back up your iPhone depends on the capacity of your computer's hard drive and how much data is already currently stored on the hard drive.

Here is how to check the amount of hard drive space on your computer:

Mac

• Choose the Apple logo in the top left corner on your Mac and select "About This Mac."

• Pick "Storage" and you will see the amount of hard drive space remaining on your Mac.

Apple also has instructions and tips on their official website should you need more details about how to check your Mac's hard drive space usage.

Windows 10 or 11

• Select the Start button and choose Settings.

• Select System > Storage.

Microsoft also has additional tips on their official website.

We also have a helpful Decipher Tools FAQ article that includes suggestions on how to free up hard space on your computer.

Additional questions?

If you have any questions or need help with freeing up hard drive space on your computer so that you can back up your iPhone, feel free to contact us via our Decipher Tools support page and one of our team in San Francisco or Phoenix will reply back to you and assist.