Apple's preferred backup & photo saving to external drive

1 - There is no direct way to backup iOS devices to an external drive on a Mac. iOS device backups are saved to a hidden folder on your Mac (~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync). It is possible to *copy* the backup folder to an external drive then remove it from .../MobileSync to save space ... however, you cannot do an iOS restore from an external drive, and copying the backup folder back & forth risks corruption of the backup.

I suggest that with a 1TB drive you should be able to free enough space to store the backups. See what you can do. In my own case, I use external drives to store nearly all my data, keeping the internal drive relatively free; and one of the reasons is to have space for iOS backups. Note that normally only the most recent backup is retained, each time you back up the previous backup is overwritten.

2 - I use Image Capture to transfer photos from my iPhones to my Mac. They can be transferred to any folder on any drive, you just have to tell Image Capture to save to the specific folder/drive when you do the import.

There is no Apple preferred other than using Time Machine. What I do with with two iMacs, a Mac Mini M4 and two iPhones is to:

1 - Connect each iPhone ro its iMac with its power cable and, via the Finder, backup the iPhone to the corresponding iMac or Mini.

2 - to backup the iMacs/Mini I have an external drive that'a about 2 times the size of the drives being backup up (3 external drives + the boot drive) and employ Time Machine.

3 - for special files, Photos and Music libraries I addinitionally create a second backup of those files using Carbon Copy Cloner. CCC makes incremental backups (i.e. it copies only those files that are new or newly modified to the backup and deletes any files that have been deleted from the original). It can be programed to run hourly daily or on whatever schedule the use wants.

ive never uploaded photos/video to iCloud for various reasons

but you want to be aware iCloud saves the full resolution copy and leaves a small low resolution on your iPhone (i guess to save space)

so pulling your backups off iCloud gets the original copy

pulling them off your iPhone (texting or emailing or sharing them) only has access to the low resolution

i am not sure how macOS Photos app saves them -- if they are full or low resolution in the app

and all that may have changed since i last looked into it

i use an app called iMazing for secondary iPhone management

Apple advises to use Time Machine to backup Mac's to an external drive. The drive should be 2-3x the capacity of the Mac's internal drive in order to allow for lot's of backup history. If you are unfamiliar with Time Machine please click Back up your Mac with Time Machine for an explanation and "how to." Apple has been using Time Machine for its Mac backup solution for many many years. It is simple, easy to use and reliable.

To backup your IOS devices (iPhone & iPad) you can use iCloud (recommended) or you can manually backup to your Mac. If you do not already use iCloud then please click Introduction to iCloud - Apple Support

lswaterford wrote:

1.) What is the preferred "Apple" method to backup devices (iPhone, iPads) to an external drive?

I don't think they have one for doing a backup directly from an iPhone or an iPad to an external drive. There is the option of manually doing backups to a Mac, using a cabled and the Finder (or iTunes on High Sierra and Mojave).

2.) What is the preferred "Apple" method to save device pictures to an external drive?

Likewise. What I do is to use iCloud Photos on both my iPhone and my Mac – keeping the "Optimize" setting OFF, on the Mac, so that the Mac always gets full-size copies of photos. Then I back up the Mac to a couple of external drives.

-g wrote:

but you want to be aware iCloud saves the full resolution copy and leaves a small low resolution on your iPhone (i guess to save space)

That depends on how you set up your iPhone.

You can tell the iPhone to "Optimize iPhone Storage", in which case things behave that way, or you can tell the iPhone to keep full-size copies of all photos and videos (if you have enough local storage for them all).

i am not sure how macOS Photos app saves them -- if they are full or low resolution in the app

Photos > Settings…, iCloud tab:

Servant of Cats

you always take me back to school -- thanks the info

i had a client kept sending me low-rez pics/video for their Bluray a few years ago -- i looked into it -- that's what i discovered -- they had to download them off their iCloud for the originals (their iPhone only had the low-rez)

it's good to know the settings now...