., Other OS, .
Is there anyway to backup my phone to my external hd instead?
I am trying to upgrade to OS 5 on my iphone 3gs and having this same problem, ie it can't backup because there's not enough space on this computer's harddrive and it needs over 20 GIGS(!!!!) available to do the backup! My external HD has around 800 gigs available. Suggestions to get a new harddrive are, in my opinion, totally ridiculous! It is also ridiculous but not surprising that iTunes would be so difficult as to not have a facility to change a backup location. Typical I'm afraid! I hope you may have had some success, Mark! Cheers :-)
I have posted a way to do this in Windows 7 here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3391294?answerId=16413742022#16413742022
I'm currently looking into how to do it in OSX
I suspect that you could create an alias for the Backups folder, which points to an actual folder on the usable-sized HDD. Apple really needs to implement Preferences for this. It's *absurd* to expect 128gb of backup data to go onto one's MAIN INTERNAL BOOT HDD! Even if it's a 1TB drive, standard Apple fare, that's OVER TEN PERCENT of the HDD used for ONE ipwn backup. :-/ Anyway, I am going to try the alias/softlink solution. i.e. MOVE ~/Library/iTunes to the external HDD. command-option-drag&drop to create an alias of that folder back into ~/Library. Why the **** don't Apple products ever work without massive Brazil-level kludges and 42 miles of duct tape and bailing wire?!? :-/
Did you check the size of your backup on your computer and compare it to the size of data on your iPhone?
Even if you used all available space on your phone, the back will never be the same size, the data for the backup will be compressed. I use 30GB on my phone and the size of the backup file is 3,7GB.
It might also help to check this:
To avoid ruining any of your backup files, here's what you should know:
- Your computer saves backups made in iTunes to the Backup folder in your Users 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, because these actions might ruin the files. For example, to restore from a relocated backup file, you need to move it back or the file won't work. Backups serve as a safe copy of your entire device. 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.
copied from: Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support
backup to external drive?
