Backing Up iPhones and iPad to External HDD

There are four reasons I am avoiding the iCloud path:

1) Cost. The monthly $US9.99 for 2 TB plan (iCloud+ plans and pricing - Apple Support) is cost prohibitive especially in consideration of the fact that I have two perfectly good 5TB external HDDs. One year's worth of iCloud fees can more than cover the cost of a decently sized external drive.

2) Even though I have seen other folks mention terminal commands, I'll be honest. Even though I am fairly technically proficient, I have had a hard time following some of these solutions.

3) The max iCloud+ plan that Apple offers is 2 TB. I am sure that there are people who need more than 2 TB.

4) Redundancy. Cloud-based backups are only one part of a backup plan. A solid disaster recovery plan incorporates external drives stored both locally and off-site in addition to cloud-based backups. Cloud availability is not 100% (e.g., Acts of God, war, weather, power surges, lousy ISPs, angry squirrels, etc., etc., ad infinitum...). OK, sorry.. that last part is bad humor. Hopefully, I can communicate the good-natured drift of the point I am trying to make - we can't count on the Cloud being there 100% of the time.

I sincerely hope the solution and our imagination are a bit more flexible than just throwing up our hands in defeat, saying "what may work is do the backup the way Apple intended". Hopefully someone on the Apple team can chime in, or I may just need to submit another piece of feedback for improvements in a future release?

P.,

Yeah, thanks for posting that filtered link for Old Toad. After going through the first few pages, I haven't found any solutions yet for my quest, but I still need to work on searching back through his posts.

I think I finally found a post from Apple which tells me that my quest is going to be a "Bridge Too Far" for the foreseeable future.

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Find backups stored on your Mac or PC

To avoid ruining any of your backup files, here's what you should know:

The Finder and iTunes save backups to a Backup folder. The location of the Backup folder varies by operating system. Though you can copy the Backup folder, you should never move it to a different folder, external drive, or network drive.

Don't edit, relocate, rename, or extract content from your backup files. For example, to restore from a relocated backup file, you need to move the backup file back to where it was in the Backup folder or the file won't work. Backups serve as a safe copy of almost all of your device's data and settings. So while you might be able to view or access a backup file's contents, the contents usually aren't stored in a format that you can read.

(Source: Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support)

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I just realized that I may have to:

1) Deselect the option to automatically sync my iPhones and iPad with the Mac mini.

2) Manually backup each device as needed.

3) Manually move the backups between the external drive and the Mac mini's internal storage.

Thank you for the link! I sincerely appreciate the help. I hope that Cupertino can find it in their hearts to treat my quest as a future feature, not a bug. Somehow, I don't think I will be holding my breath on that one! Ha!

P.,

Yes, thanks. I violently agree with everything you posted regarding the process for manual back-ups, which is something that I already implement. My rub - and my Don Quixote quest - is that we as end users should not have to suffer in silence with a substandard solution.

I noticed that macOS will automatically reach out to backup the iPhones and iPad - I see no way to turn off that automated backup unless someone give me the 411 that I am overlooking. There HAS to be a better way to manage the backups so that my internal drive memory doesn't get clobbered with backups.

There are folks out there who intentionally buy small internal drives with the strategy of keeping all data off-device. I'm sure that someone in that group who is smarter than I (which is a low bar!) has already implemented an automated process for saving those backups off-device.

I sure hope Cupertino is reading this thread!

I just submitted my feedback through Product Feedback - Apple, so I shall see if Cupertino listens!

Thanks!