iPhone back up to Windows

There is no official way, but if you do a web search for “backup iPhone to external drive” you will find many tutorials.

In principle you create a backup location on an external drive, move the current backup folder from your internal drive to the external, then replace the internal backup folder with a symbolic link to the external drive. But the tutorials you find will give very detailed instructions.

Note also that a backup of your 256 GB iPhone only backs up actual space that is used, and doesn’t include apps, only app data, and doesn’t include music. And it also doesn’t include anything that you sync to iCloud. So most backups aren’t all that large. The backup of my 256GB iPhone that is half full, for example, is 6 GB.

You need an 3rd party app, such as iMazing.

You can choose a hard disk as back up location.

See this Apple article: Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

👉 Copy backups to another location

If you need copies of your backups, you can find the Backup folder and copy the entire folder (not just part of it) to another place, like an external drive or network-storage location.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

The iOS installer will most likely be included if it has been downloaded but not installed. But the installer is deleted after a successful installation.

I usually find the IPSW file for a previous version of iOS or iPadOS in my MacOS Trash Can after the newer version is installed, so I was thinking they get stored locally until the next update. I was thinking the PC version (aka iTunes) does something similar with the iOS packages - i.e. storing them until the next version is installed before it's trashed.

And that reminds me. I did a search just to see what I have on my Mac. I have iPhone_4.7_P3_15.3.1_19D52_Restore.ipsw and iPad_64bit_TouchID_15.3.1_19D52_Restore.ipsw - both taking up more than 5 GB each. So it doesn't look like it gets deleted immediately; I think it might be useful if someone has multiple devices since it looks to be a single, universal package for all devices. I also happen to have an interrupted download of one (14.0.1) from 2020 that's taking up almost 4 GB on my boot drive. Or at least had.

I’ve had every iPhone since the first in 2007. There has never been a way to choose the backup location. It has always been on the system disk. You could (and still can) choose the location for the iTunes/Music library, but never the iOS backup.

Also doesn't include iOS, although an iOS package might be archived somewhere and use up space on the computer's drive. I these show up in the MacOS trash can after performing an update.

The iOS installer will most likely be included if it has been downloaded but not installed. But the installer is deleted after a successful installation.