If you've reached this help article, you may be running out of hard drive space on your computer's primary "main" hard drive, where your user account data is stored. iTunes stores iPhone backups in the user account data section, as do most third party apps, like our Decipher Tools software!

This article contains some tips I usually give to customers to free up hard drive space on the primary hard drive.

Free up Disk Space on Mac

To free up space on my own mac, I like to start by deleting stuff from the Downloads folder.

1. Open Finder
2. From the Go menu, select Downloads.
3. This folder contains files you've downloaded while web browsing. Delete items you no longer need, and then empty the trash.

That will usually get me some good mileage.

Here's some of Apple's tips too!

• Apple's guide to freeing up disk space for High Sierra
• Apple's guide to free up storage space for Sierra and higher
• Apple's documentation about increasing disk space for OS X Yosemite.

Free up Disk Space on Windows

• You can run the Windows disk cleanup tool, to have it help you find temp files to delete:

  • Windows 10 disk cleanup tool instructions from Microsoft

  • Windows 7 and Windows 8 disk cleanup tool instructions from Microsoft

• Check the Downloads folder for items you downloaded from web sites to delete ones you don't need anymore. See the section "Find files you’ve downloaded on your PC"

• If you haven't already, empty the recycle bin :)

I like to start with these before moving on to "larger" more permanent things like uninstalling programs you don't use.