If you read this post you will learn exactly how to do that...

Hello, thank you for the useful advice.  I've been unable to back up my iPad to iCloud since they released iOS 9 (my last backup had been in November) and all of the iOS updates they have released since then have not fixed the problem.  Like many are saying, my laptop does not have nearly enough space to back it up directly to iTunes and a friend suggested trying to back up to an external, which I hadn't even thought about before that.  I followed the commands in Terminal and did a manual back up through iTunes and this is the file that was generated.  The file names look very strange and I'm not sure if that's normal or if something went wrong.  I attached a screen shot.  Please let me know what you think!

Thank you

To backup iPhone to external hard drive, first option is iCloud: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH12519. Another option is iTunes, but the process is tricky. Here is the way that I learn from other post and it works for me.

In a nutshell:

• Copy ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/ to a new location, say /Volumes/~Your External HDD~/MobileSync. This directory has a folder called Backups, which is where iTunes stores backups for mobile devices.

Note 1: ~/ is an alias computers use for your home folder.

Note 2: Your ~/Library folder is hidden by default. You can open it in Finder by opening Terminal typing in open ~/Library.

• Remove/rename ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup.
• Create a symbolic link to the new location for Backups in your external hard drive. This is basically like an alias in the old location of Backups to its new location. To do so open Terminaland type in

  ln -s /Volumes/**~Your External HDD~**/MobileSync/Backup ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup 

<Link Edited by Host>

I too was troubled by this issue, I had switched computers but did not move over the iTunes library assuming it could be done Phone-to-iTunes. There is an app that I found called Senuti which works perfectly. The only catch is that it is free only up to 1000 songs. You simply open the app with your phone connected, then select a folder for the music to be placed. Then, your iPhone music library will appear and you can select your songs and click the "transfer" button with the green arrow.

Hope this helps!

Link to Senuti:

https://www.fadingred.com/senuti/

Import photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your computer

Learn how to import photos and videos that you've taken or saved on your iOS device to your Mac or Windows PC.

Import photos and videos to your Mac

You can use Photos or Image Capture to import media from your iOS device. After you import, you can edit your photos and videos. You can also trim video clips, put together photo books, and more.

After you import your photos from your iOS device to your computer, you can use iTunes to sync them back to your device. You can't import photos or videos synced from iTunes. You can only import photos and videos from the Camera Roll on your device.

Photos and Image Capture

If you have photos or videos saved on a hard disk or other storage device, you can import them to Photos on your Mac.

If you have photos that were taken with a film camera, you can import them to Photos by converting them to digital files with a scanner. You can also change the date and time of the scanned images in Photos. Select the image and choose Image > Adjust Date and Time.

Learn more about using Image Capture to import images.

Import photos and videos to your Windows PC

Before you import your photos and videos:

• Unlock your iOS device using your passcode.
• Make sure that your iOS device trusts the computer that you're using to import your media to.

When you import photos and videos from your device to your computer, some might be rotated incorrectly. To play videos on your computer at the correct orientation, use iTunes for Windows.

If you can't import your photos to your computer, or your computer doesn't recognize your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch as a camera, learn what to do. Windows XP might not be able to import videos larger than 500MB without iTunes installed, a third-party program, or updated drivers.

Thank you for the reply. I did try that and had too many errors. I am looking for a way to do this without using terminal. I have had issues in the past where there were syntax errors with the terminal code provided and cause too many problems! But thank you for point me to your post.

Pam

Hi martinizi,

What commands should I use if I decide that I want to revert back to the original setup so that it backups to my hard drive and not my external drive once there's enough space on my hard drive again?

Thank you,

Kana

This worked great, thank you.

You know what would be a great follow up to this, what Kana asked for, the steps/commands to undo the setup.

Best, Rick

This works for me, and a backup is made on the external drive, but iTunes doesn't recognize that a backup was made - which keeps the restore from backup button from being available if i need to actually restore.

I had the exact same thing. Totally computer illerite over hear, but what I tried (and succeeded) was:

Make the Backup folder manually on my drive

Replace the <ExternalDriveName> with MyDrive (name of the drive - no angle brackets)

Seems to work for me!