How to back up iPhone 17 Pro Max to an external hard drive?

As mentioned you can't directly backup an iPhone to an external drive.

You can copy files, and photos to an external drive from an iPhone through the Files app.

Or you can backup to a computer and then move that backup to the external drive.

Or you can make it so the backup on the computer is automatically saved on the external drive by using a symlink to redirect the backup folder on the computer to the external drive.

click here ➜ Relocate iOS device Backups - User Tip

Wirth that done, you can then use iTunes or the Devices App (windows) or Finder (Mac) to backup normally and it will save the backup to the external drive.

click here ➜ Back up iPhone - Apple Support

You can't do this.....at least directly, because there is no way to tell the iPhone the exact location of the hard drive.

What you can do is back up to a Mac or PC and then try to copy the backup to an attached hard drive on the computer.

Heads Up......the backups on the hard drive have not been reliable when I've tried this in the past.

I suspect this is because the iPhone is looking for backups at a specific location......and a location other than iCloud, a PC or Mac is not going to be recognized in my experience.

Another way to say the same thing.......you can't tell the iPhone to back up to a location other than iCloud, a PC or Mac.

If you want to give this a try anyway, please post back on your results.

Ironically, If you have a Time Capsule and have been backing up your Mac to the Time Capsule.....you can restore backups from the past this way. Unfortunately, the next Mac OS will not support Time Machine backups to a Time Capsule......so there's the rub.

I have a MacBook and I backup my phone, via Finder, here instead of iCloud.

How do I backup my cell phone.