So say you had your first iPhone 3G stolen lost your first iPhone 3G, but you had it backed up.  Now when you get your second iPhone as a replacement, it’s still running 2.0 software, not the 2.1 software which you had your first phone running.  Hence your backup won’t work.  So you upgrade your new phone to 2.1, and find out as you start using it that the earpiece doesn’t work–that’s right, no sound coming out of it.  Back to the Apple Store you go (despite it being less than 24 hours old–gotta go to Apple, as AT&T will tell you you’re SOL).  You exchange your phone.  Now you’ve got your new phone, but of course it’s back on 2.0, and your backup won’t work.  I’m sure once you’ve upgraded to 2.1 you could then restore, but all the apps and such are backed up anyway, so what’s the point as they’ll auto-reload.  Perhaps it’s quicker and I’m dumb.  

Either way, a few weeks later you go to install 10.5.5 and find out you’ve got not enough free space on your aging hard drive.  But you think, “Hrm, do I have a bunch of worthless backups?”  And the answer is, “Yes!”.

From this Apple KB article, here’s how to delete them and free up some precious space on your disk:

  1. Open iTunes Preferences (Windows: Edit->Preferences; Mac: iTunes->Preferences)
  2. Click Syncing (iTunes 7.x) or Devices (iTunes 8.x)
  3. Click the backup you want to remove
  4. Click Remove Backup (iTunes 7.x) or Delete Backup (iTunes 8.x)
  5. Confirm you want to delte the selcted backup
  6. Click Ok and close your way out
Now you’ve gotten some space back.  Of course, you’ve then got to figure out why the 10.5.5 update package is having permission errors…but hey at least you can run it!

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