Do I Need To Delete Old Backups From Wd My Passport For Mac

I have a WD My Passport Essential 500G and I want to delete all my backups and I don't know how. I would go in there with mouse blazing hammering the Delete button but there is a pretty off-putting message telling me not to. I want to delete them cause it has sort of backed up a few Trojans. Could you please specify if the problem with your WD My Passport external HDD is only on a Windows 10 computer, or if you have troubles accessing the drive from other PCs as well? You can try connecting the HDD to different USB ports including USB 2.0 ports if such are available.

If you do now or have ever synced your iPhone, iPad, or other iOS devices to iTunes by connecting it to your Mac, you have backup folders stored on your internal drive. It's just the way life is. Maybe you only have a few files from a couple of iTunes backups and they don't take up much space. Maybe you've been backing up your iPhone via iTunes for years and have a space hog on your hands.

If you back up your iPhone or iPad via iTunes and feel the need to get these iOS backups off of your Mac and onto an external hard drive, it is possible to do, but beware, Apple really doesn't recommend it.

Note: This guide is for people that back up their iPhone or iPad using iTunes. If you use iCloud to back up your device, you can simply delete any old iTunes backups on your Mac. Just make sure you really are backing up to iCloud before you delete anything.

What are these backup files and why are they taking up so much space?

When you back up your iOS device via iTunes, the backup is stored on your Mac. The location of the backup folder is in a folder called MobileSync, and sometimes it gets pretty big. Especially if you are syncing multiple 128+ GB devices that are full of stuff. Old backups are replaced with new ones, but families that have multiple devices backed up to one computer are going to take up a lot of storage space.

Why is shockwave plugin always crashing in chrome for mac. I highly recommend switching over to syncing in iCloud, and then deleting the backups on your Mac, over relocating them. But, if you're still hell-bent on moving them to an external hard drive, I'm here to help.

Step 1: Locate your iPhone backups

This part is easy. Your iOS backups are stored in a MobileSync folder. You can find them by typing ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup into Spotlight. You can also find the backups for specific iOS devices from iTunes.

1. Launch iTunes.
2. Click on iTunes in the upper left corner of your Mac.

3. Click on Preferences from the drop-down menu.

4. Select the Devices tab.
5. Select a specific device.
6. Hold down the Control key and click on the device.

7. Select Show in Finder from the list of available options.

Step 2: Move your backups to an external hard drive

This part is easy, too. But, you really have to pay close attention to the name of your hard drive and the new folder names you create, including punctuation and spacing. This information will be used when creating a Terminal pathway. If you use different names then the ones I suggest, be sure to replace it with the exact name you have in the Terminal command in Step 3.

1. Connect your external hard drive to your Mac if it isn't already connected.
2. Open the external hard drive.
3. Go back to the Finder window with your iOS backups in it and select the device backup folder (It will either be called 'Backup' or have a bunch of numbers and letters).

4. Drag it to your external hard drive.

5. Enter your administrator password to authenticate your action.
6. Rename the iOS backup folder that is now on your external hard drive to ios_backup. You may have to enter your administrator password once again to make this change.

7. Rename the old backup folder in Finder to old_backup.

Do not delete the old_backup folder yet.

Step 3: Create a symlink to tell iTunes the new location of your backups

This is the more difficult and most important step to moving your iOS backups to an external hard drive. If you don't perform this step, iTunes won't be able to back up your iPhone or iPad anymore. You'll have to manually move the folders back to your Mac instead.

In this step, you'll create a symlink — or symbolic link. When you create a symlink, you are creating a new path for iTunes to take to get to the backups folder. It is sort of like creating an alias in Finder, but it works more reliably with iTunes.

Former iMore writer and Mac genius (seriously, he's a genius with a Mac) Peter Cohen explains symlinks perfectly.

Some applications don't follow aliases properly. An older way of creating those sorts of connections is more reliable for actions like what we want iTunes to do: Symbolic links, or symlinks. They work at a low enough level that applications and operating system functions don't have as hard a time with them as they do aliases.

We're going to use the Mac's Terminal app to create a symbolic link to trick iTunes into backing up onto your external drive rather than the boot drive.

If you're using macOS Mojave, you will first need to change the permissions for Terminal on your Mac. Otherwise, you won't have permission to follow the remaining steps of this process. To do so:

1. Open System Preference.
2. Select Security & Privacy.
3. Choose the Privacy tab.
4. If this screen is locked, select Click the lock to make changes at the bottom left of the screen. Otherwise, skip to Step 7.

5. Enter your system password and click Unlock on the popup screen.

6. Click Full Disk Access on the left-hand side of the screen.
7. Choose + to add Terminal to the list of apps with full control on your computer.
8. In the Finder screen that's displayed, type Terminal in the search box.
9. In the search results, highlight Terminal.

10. Tap Open.

Next, a lesson in using Terminal. The proper pathway is very important for this to work. Every person's hard drive name and every backup folder name will be different. The following is the anatomy of the Terminal code we are using:

ln -s /Volumes/External/ios_backup ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/4f1234a05e6e7ccbaddfd12345678f1234b123f

• ln -s: The command that tells the operating system to go to the new location.
• Volumes: A hard drive.
• External: The name of a hard drive. Yours will likely be named something else. In the Terminal command, you must change 'External' to whatever your external hard drive is named.
• ios_backup: The renamed backup folder you dragged into your external hard drive. This is the new place that your iOS backups will be stored.
• ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup: The command that tells the operating system where the backup is.
• 4f1234a05e6e7ccbaddfd12345678f1234b123f: The name of the device backup folder. If you are transferring all of your backups, this will just be named 'Backup.' If you are transferring one device, use the name of the backup folder for your device. The one above isn't even a real file name. You must change the above backup folder name to whatever is the name of the folder you are transferring.

If your external hard drive's name has a space, be sure to use the proper coding. For example, if your hard drive is named 'My Passport' be sure to use a backslash after My, then the space, then Passport. Like this: My Passport. Don't forget to capitalize when necessary.

1. Find Terminal using Spotlight.

2. Type the following code. Don't forget to change the hard drive name and the backup folder name to reflect the name of your hard drive and backup folder.

   ln -s /Volumes/External/ios_backup ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/4f1234a05e6e7ccbaddfd12345678f1234b123f

3. Hit Return.
4. Quit Terminal.

You will see a new folder in your MobileSync folder that is either called 'Backup' or the series of numbers and letters that represent your device. You can tell this is a symlink because it will have an arrow in the bottom left corner.

Next, you'll need to confirm that it worked before deleting your old_backup file on your Mac.

1. Launch iTunes.

2. Connect your iPhone and back it up.

3. Open the ios_backup folder on your external hard drive.

4. Check to see that the date and time on the latest backup is for the one you just completed.

If the pathway relocation worked, and you can confirm that backups are now happening on your external hard drive, you can delete the old_backup folder on your Mac.

Note: If you go back to the MobileSync folder and open the symlink folder, you will see the names of the files that relate to your backup. These are aliases. Not actual files. It's like a thumbnail of a picture.

Step 4: Disable automatic backups when connected to iTunes

If you don't always have an external hard drive connected to your Mac, you're going to need to disable automatic backups of your iPhone or iPad. Otherwise, whenever you connect your iOS device to your Mac, you'll get an error message.

1. Launch iTunes.
2. Click on iTunes in the upper left corner of your Mac.

3. Click on Preferences from the drop-down menu.

4. Select the Devices tab.

5. Tick the box at the bottom next to Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically.

Don't forget to manually back up your iPhone whenever you connect it to iTunes and have your external hard drive plugged in.

How to remove the symlink and go back to storing your backups on your Mac

If you made a mistake and the symlink didn't work, or you simply just want to go back to storing your backups on your Mac, all you have to do is delete the symlink folder you created. No need to enter any kind of 'rm' or 'unlink' command in Terminal.

1. Type ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup into Spotlight.
2. Select the symlink folder. Remember, it's the one with an arrow in the bottom left. It will either be called 'Backup' or have a series of numbers and letters representing your device.
3. Delete the symlink folder.
4. Back up your device via iTunes.
5. Delete the ios_backup folder on your external hard drive (optional).

Any questions?

Do you have any questions about moving your iOS backups to an external hard drive? Put them in the comments and I'll help you out.

Install VirtualBox. Step 1: Download the latest version of VirtualBox (I have included the latest (June 2018) link for VirtualBox for you above). Name: macOS 10.12 Sierra. Type: Mac OS X. Version: Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan (64 bit) or 10.12 Sierra. Memory size is 4 GB ( 70% of your Ram ). Installing macOS Sierra in VirtualBox is very easy; you download virtual disk and open it with VirtualBox, then create a new virtual machine. Here are the steps to install macOS Sierra on VirtualBox on Windows. In our previous post we have shown you that how to install macOS Sierra 10.12 on VMware and now in this article, I’m going to show you that how to install macOS Sierra 10.12 on VirtualBox. Apple has announced the next version of its Mac operating system: Sierra.Of course, the real change is that, after fifteen years, Apple has finally ditched the “OS X” moniker.

January 2019: Updated to reflect increased security in macOS Mojave.

Backing up: The ultimate guide

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Read Craig Federighi's email to an aspiring young developer

A young aspiring developer who wrote an email to Craig Federighi has taken to Reddit, after Federighi surprised him with a response.

See How Much Space Backups Are Consuming RELATED: To see how much space those local Time Machine backups are consuming, click the Apple icon on the menu bar, click About This Mac, and click the Storage heading. The “Backups” category here represents your local snapshots.

You can’t normally see or access these backup files — use the commands below if you need to quickly remove them from your Mac’s internal storage. Why Your Mac Creates Local Snapshots RELATED: Local snapshots are only created if two things are true. First, you must be using a Mac notebook and not a Mac desktop PC. Second, you must have to back up to an external drive. If you’re using a desktop Mac with Time Machine enabled, or if you’re using a Mac notebook with Time Machine disabled, your Mac won’t bother creating local snapshots.

These snapshots are designed to help you recover deleted files or previous versions of files, even if your laptop is away from its Time Machine drive for a while. Your Mac automatically creates them in the background, and the Time Machine icon on your menu bar won’t even say it’s doing anything as it does so. These local snapshots are stored on your Mac’s startup partition along with all your other files. You can open Time Machine and restore those files, even if you haven’t actually plugged in your drive and performed a Time Machine backup in a while. You can also recover previous versions of files from your Mac’s local snapshots if you don’t have your Time Machine drive with you. It’s a safety net designed for portable laptop use.

To take advantage of those local snapshots, just open the Time Machine interface and try to restore an old file. You’ll be able to do so without plugging in your Time Machine drive, as long as that old file is part of your local snapshots. For example, in the screenshot below, a snapshot was taken earlier in the day at 1:58 pm. The Time Machine drive wasn’t plugged our MacBook at this point in time, so that’s a local snapshot stored entirely on our Mac. Your Mac Tries to Automatically Purge Backups, But This is a useful feature, but it’s counterintuitive. You probably expect Time Machine to back up primarily to an external drive, so opening up the disk space usage window and seeing local backups taking up gigabytes of precious space on your Mac’s drive can be confusing. However, your Mac does tell you it keeps these backups — it says it keeps “Local snapshots as space permits” in the Time Machine window.

The “as space permits” bit is the key here. When less than 20 percent of the space on your Mac’s startup disk is available — or if less than 5 GB of space is available — your Mac will start automatically purging the oldest Time Machine local snapshots to free up space. At less than 10 percent or 5 GB available, your Mac will become even more aggressive. In theory, you shouldn’t have to worry about how much space is being used for backups. Your Mac will use spare disk space for backups, just to be safe, and free up that disk space for other things when you need it. How to Delete the Local Backups This will work for most people, but it can sometimes cause problems. If you want to shrink your Mac’s disk partition, create a full disk backup, or start installing a massive game or other piece of software that needs a lot of disk space available, those local snapshots can get in the way.

Here’s how to purge them. If you opt to disable Time Machine entirely, your Mac will remove those local snapshots, too. But this isn’t necessary, and you probably don’t want to do it this way. There is a way to delete only the local snapshots, although Apple doesn’t make it easy to find — it requires using a terminal command. Open a Terminal window by, typing Terminal, and pressing Enter. Type the following command into the terminal and press Enter: sudo tmutil disablelocal This disables the “local snapshots” feature in Time Machine. After a moment or two, your Mac will automatically purge all the local snapshots from your startup disk, giving you back all that free space. Your Mac will never create local snapshots again, unless you run another command.

If you’d like to keep using local snapshots in the future, you can run the following command to re-enable this feature. Your Mac will resume creating local snapshots, starting over from scratch so they won’t immediately consume a lot of hard disk space: sudo tmutil enablelocal These backups are stored under the.MobileBackups folder under the root directory on your Mac’s boot drive. Because it begins with a. Character, it’s normally so you can’t see it. Don’t try to delete those files by hand — to purge Time Machine’s local snapshots, just use the above command.

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