Can't Change iPhone Backup Location

I followed the steps and everything went fine until I tried backing up from iTunes. When I try to backup it fails with a message "itunes could not back up because the backup was corrupt or not compatible." When I delete the "tunneled" Backup folder and back up again it works because it's being backed up to its old spot (C Drive)...Please help.

Running a backup on my iPhone now with the backup folder on D:

After moving the backup folder to my D: drive I managed to make an error in the MkLInk command. The link was created, but it pointed to a non existent folder. Double-clicking the link gave an error. Once I corrected my mistake I was able to drill down into the backup folder. When I fired up iTunes I could see my three device backups and iTunes is happily updating files.

tt2

Where is the new location?

The command should look something like this:

MkLink /J "%AppData%\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup" "D:\MobileSync\Backup"

The quotes around the two paths are needed if there are any spaces in them otherwise the space is treated as a parameter separator.

tt2

Without knowing exactly what you did when it is hard to say if you can reconnect to your old backup data. If you were running out of room when backing up it may have been corrupt before you started trying to relocate it. It is perhaps worth mentioning that there is normally one rolling backup for each device. Unless you need to restore it then there is no real problem deleting the current backup and creating a new one. If you want multiple snapshots of your device, on Windows at any rate, then you need to periodically backup and then immediately restore your device. Once you have several archived backup sets you can start culling the older ones.

tt2

Dear Turingtest2,

What happens if for any reason i want to return to the original route? What procedure should be done? Run again the symbolic link command but typing original the path?

Thanks in advance

ok let me first say.. thanks.. here are some clarifications for people like me..

remember that you are moving the "backup" file.. not the files inside the backup file..

so you create new folder in the drive you desire .. here mine was the F drive.. I created F:mobileSync and then I moved the backup files there.. NOTE you must also create a folder labeled "backup" in the mobilesync folder so if you are using windows you would go to the F drive. then click on the folder Mobilesync and then click on a folder backup and Inside there are the backups you moved.

Also you need to delete the from the folder that was the original folder path for iTunes the last folder in the string.. that being the "backup" I kept getting "cannot create a file when that file already exists" .. once I removed the old backup file it worked.... thanks again

You're welcome, glad to hear you got it done. 🙂

Step 2 says to move the Backup folder (albeit without the emphasis) so that once it has been moved there isn't a remaining folder in place to cause an error when you try to create the link.

tt2

ok im having problems.. when I go to sync the ipad.. iTunes says it cant find the file. I will post exactly what it says in a minuite.. I do note that when I go to prefrences - devices.. there are no devices listed anymore.

Finally it's works to create the junction but I can't found the existing back up in my itune. And I also can't back up, it show me "back up was corrupt or not compatible with the ipod".

If you've done it properly you should see something similar to this in Windows Explorer, and all of your device backups should still be listed in the library.

tt2

See Make a split library portable. You can get the entire library, apps included, stored on the same drive. ITunes has been known to break links created within the media folder..

tt2

See the Relocate iOS device backups section in my user tip for the latest advice.

Post the command you're typing in that fails.

tt2