How to Back Up iPhone to External Hard Drive via iTunes?

This doesn't necessarily work. I have my iTunes library stored on an external hard drive and the backup files still go to the main hard drive. This is extremely difficult now because I now have a 256 GB iPhone and a 256 GB Mac Book Pro.

Yo what's good martinizi, I know I'm crazy late to this thread, but you were super helpful and probably the most woke person on here lol, so I figured I'd ask for your knowledge on my question. --So I went through the whole process and it took a while because my phone has hella data, however, after almost an hour I forgot to check if it was finished before unplugging (oops!) So I think I'm short on my backed up data by about 20 gigs. Additionally, in iTunes it doesn't give me the option to restore this recent back up. I'm not sure if that's because I overrode iTunes using the terminal for my external backup..., or because I didn't finish. I think it's the first, but regardless tomorrow or later I'm gonna just start over and do the whole process again allowing it to properly finish.

Now for the real question (that regards the aforementioned), Do I need another terminal series of commands to restore, say: a new iPhone with this backup? Or is there a way to now do it through iTunes? Thanks so much and sorry for the novel of a post! -Pce out

This is a bad way of doing it. Because then you are basically logged out of your itunes with all your media on it, on your original drive, and will have to switch back and forth. A larger drive might not be an option.

You need to point iTunes to the library on the external drive. Hold down the OPTION key while opening iTunes. You will be prompted to select a library. Navigate to the external drive to select the iTunes library you wish to use. From that point on when you sync the phone the backups will go to the iTunes library on the external drive.

If you are running out of space on your hard drive, then I suggest replacing it with a larger drive.

From the Mac OS X Finder, hit Command+Shift+G to bring up the “Go To” window, type the following directory in:

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/

From this folder, copy the “Backup” folder to a new location on the external hard drive, for the sake of this guide we’ll choose a folder called iOSBackup on a drive named “External” Before trashing the origin folder, rename the existing Backup folder to something else for backup reasons, like Backup2.

Resources: How to transfer purchased music from iPhone to iTunes library

How to copy music from iPhone to Mac osx

I have tried this amd my iphone 5 keeps backing up to my MBA 256 instead of my external 1TB (where the rest of my itunes files and iphoto data is). I tried http://aaltonen.co/2011/01/03/change-the-location-of-your-iphone-backup/ and http://njdnjdnjd.blogspot.ca/2013/04/move-your-iphone-ipad-or-ios-device.html with no luck:(

I even tried http://jrobinson.ghostshell.com/?p=577, even renaming my external HD and folder word for word from their example, but I got the message "iTunes could not back up the iphone "username" because the backup was corrupt or not compatible with the iphone. Delete the backup fro this iphone, then try again." I deleted the empty files and tried again but go the same message. Is this from iTunes 11 updates (would this work with iTunes 10?). Please help. Has anyone backed up a iphone 5 to an external HD using iTunes 11 where the actual iphone 5 backup is stored on the external and not internal HD? I have a macbook air, so hence the need to do this externally:(

Kappy wrote:

You need to point iTunes to the library on the external drive. Hold down the OPTION key while opening iTunes. You will be prompted to select a library. Navigate to the external drive to select the iTunes library you wish to use. From that point on when you sync the phone the backups will go to the iTunes library on the external drive.

If you are running out of space on your hard drive, then I suggest replacing it with a larger drive.

Will try this when i got home;

About the replacing with a larger drive advice... means a new $2,000+ bucks spending! Not really a option.

i can only use notebook(and i m sure there are lots others thats like me), desktop is virtually no use for me except for a game machine which is not a mac.

mac cant be openned.

replacing drive means replacing to a new mac.

besides, there is no 1TB+ SDD (at least being-reasonable-to-buy ones, there isnt any),

512GB is so out dated volumn comparing with common 2TB HD now and Larges softwares and Apps, and database sizes.

A External disk is cheaper.

you dont need your music and app backups when you are working, so i can forgo that.

You can do the following to get the setup you need.

• Copy the contents of ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/ to the external drive

  The ~ means your home drive

• Then rename the folder Backup in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/ to say BackupOld

  mv ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/BackupOld

• Create a new linked folder to the external drive (I assume the external drive is called ExtDrive
  • First create a folder called iTunesBackup on the external drive

    mkdir /Volumes/ExtDrive/iTunesBackup

  • Now create a link between where iTunes thinks the backups are and the external drive

    ln -s ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup /Volumes/ExtDrive/Backup

Job done....

Thanks for the tip, Chewbunny. I believe the last Terminal command in your post should read:

ln -s /Volumes/ExtDrive/Backup ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup

Changing that made the proper link and got everything working for me.

I just saw this post. Brilliant!

My bad. Yes the link syntax you posted is the correct version. The second reference shoul be the link and the first the actual file/directory. Glad you got it working and hope it helped.

I tried to do the last step and terminal gave me this error:

-bash: -s: command not found

This is what I pasted (4TB is the name of the ExtDrive):

-s /Volumes/4TB/iTunesBackup/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/iTunesBackup

Thanks

This will just about sort it out: How to backup iPhone to external drive

I appreciate the response but I am on a Mac not a PC.