I want to backup my phone to an external hard drive.

you can

find the dir it backup to

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

and then mount the external hd as that dir

windows 10 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/disk-management/assign-a -mount-point-folder-path-to-a-drive

mac http://www.mac-forums.com/macos-operating-system/262515-mounting-hard-drive-fold er-osx-lion.html

iTunes will backup as normally but it's just to a dir which is physically not on the disk it would seem

Hello!

This morning I did back up all of ours five devices and after that my C-drive reported only 9% of the free space. I did not like that and I deleted every single back up. Some people offer solution but that was in 2016. I am not sure it works with this new iTunes. It would be great if Apple give us that option.

Best regards

It is a storage issue but it isn't related to my phone, but rather my computer. This is something Apple should allow. Backing up to iCloud can be slower and sometimes just not possible. Why it isn't allowed baffles me.

I contacted Apple directly and was advised to look for posts on their platform, what is ridiculous. They said they couldn't even send me the link for the "answer". I was offered a bigger icloud storage, not for free of course, what I refused. Very bad policy on Apple to lock it's users like that. Lets take action guys!

I have plenty of iCloud storage, that’s not the issue. I’m trying to backup locally because restoring over WiFi takes forever! I want a physical local copy. It’s funny because it was the Apple Store guys that recommended doing so to me, yet I don’t have enough room on either of my computers to do that.

You can’t change backup location.

If it’s a storage issue, go to iTunes > Preferences > Devices > check If there are old backups there that you can delete.