Backup iPhone to external drive natively

Question

Backup iPhone to external drive natively

Dear All!

The size of my current iPhone SSD is the same as the size of my Macbook Pro drive. Allocating 80+ % of space of laptop's drive to handle mobile phone backups looks like a bad idea as laptops are not backup devices by definition and because of many other obvious reasons. I need my backup stored on physically accessible drive, iCloud backup will not work as I travel to places with limited internet availability, also - using external drive (that is only connected during backup/restore) can potentially help if laptop is infected with virus, ransomware etc. I see number of solutions where people propose adjusting iTunes setup by running custom scripts to accept external drive as main backup target. The Time Capsule will not allow you to perform a direct iPhone backup as well as I understand.

Am I missing something? There is no native and efficient solution that will allow me to backup my 256GB iPhone to an external drive and the only approach is to keep filling laptop's SSD with backups??? Perplexed...

Please, let me know if there is a solution.

iPhone 7 Plus, iOS 10.2.1, iPhone Backup

Posted on Feb 3, 2017 1:35 PM

Reply

Answer 1

LACAllen

Level 8

43,590 points

Feb 6, 2017 10:44 AM in response to Charlie Oscar

Then I am afraid you are in a classic "pick-your-battle" scenario.

You could certainly move your iTunes backups to an external drive manually.

I advise extreme caution with this and test thoroughly before implementing.

Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

Reply

Answer 2

Feb 8, 2017 8:11 AM in response to Charlie Oscar

The "native" methods for iDevice backups are over wifi to iCloud, or via iTunes to your computer. That's it - it's not a flaw but is simply the way Apple designed it.

You can make suggestions for changes at http://www.apple.com/feedback/

The only photos in either backup are those in the camera roll. It is expected that, if you're not using iCloud photo, that you are regularly archiving your files elsewhere (e.g. importing into the Photos program on a Mac, or some equivalent program in Windows, or using an online archive service like DropBox).

Reply

Answer 3

sberman

Level 10

272,802 points

Feb 3, 2017 1:49 PM in response to Charlie Oscar

The key fact you're missing is that most of the material in your iPhone's storage is not saved in an iPhone backup!

You seem to be assuming that if you have, say, 200GB of storage used on your iPhone, that your backup will therefore be about 200GB or perhaps somewhat more. Nothing could be further from the truth.

My iPhone, which reports 26.2GB of storage used (in Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage) has a backup size of 212MB, or about 0.81% of the space consumed on the iPhone. This ratio is typical.

Reply

Answer 4

Feb 6, 2017 8:57 AM in response to sberman

I have about 158GB of images stored on my iPhone alone. Most are JPEGs. The backup procedure is most probably using compression algorithms that helps to minimize allocation, still unlikely in case with images it will be able to achieve ratio you are describing. I can check later today and provide actual numbers. The images are my main concern. Third party applications will be downloaded, address book and some application data generally do not take much of space on backup media and can be backed up to both iCloud and local drive.

Reply

Answer 5

Chris CA

Level 10

82,513 points

Feb 6, 2017 9:19 AM in response to Charlie Oscar

Charlie Oscar wrote:

I have about 158GB of images stored on my iPhone alone. Most are JPEGs.

Store those in Photos on your computer (or iCloud) and sync only what you want to iPhone.

I have 64GB iPhone (only 10GB free) and my backup is only ~ 5GB.

Reply

Answer 6

Feb 8, 2017 8:04 AM in response to LACAllen

Thank you, LACAllen! Yes, I can certainly move backup from iTunes to an external drive, but this approach will force me to keep >100GB of space reserved for iPhone backup on my MacBookpro (This is exactly what I wanted to avoid).

Looks like native solution that will allow to create a backup of iPhone with large archive of pictures and documents directly to external drive is not available from Apple. You are forced to use the HD of computer where iTunes are installed (and that is not easily expendable in case with MacBookPro) or iCloud (that requires internet connection). Looks as a design flaw to me. And I hope to be wrong.

Reply