changing location of Itunes backups

Hi Red.dwarf4ever,

Thank you for participating in the Apple Support Communities. We understand you're trying to change the location of iTunes backups, and we'd like to assist. There isn't a supported way to do this within iTunes. You could always move the backup to a different location after you create it. This article explains how to locate your backups if needed:

Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

Take care.

iTunes doesn't have a mechanism to store the backup data at a different path. The aim of the junction is to redirect the file read and write operations to a different drive. iTunes works as normal, referencing everything on the C: drive, but the data actually lives on the alternate drive. It appears to be in both places, but only consumes space in one of them. Because iTunes isn't aware of the redirection it still checks the system drive for free space before backing up, so if it thinks it is going to need say 30Gb for a backup, then you must have that and more available on the C: drive. After the backup the space used on the C: will be unchanged, while your other drive will have its free space reduced.

See Relocate iOS device backups. Review the rest of the Make a split library portable user tip for advice on organizing the iTunes library on secondary storage.

tt2

Exactly, the data appears in two (or more) locations, but only exists once. There are two versions of iTunes, one a direct download from apple.com, the other delivered through the Microsoft Store. They use two different paths for app data. You've clearly had each version at some point, but only one of them will be used by whatever version you currently have installed.

tt2

I agree it can be confusing until you've wrapped your head around it. If you want to reassure yourself try placing multiple copies of a large file into the backup folder and watch the free space change on the two drives as you do so.

tt2

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2