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My MacBook has no space for my iPhone to backup. Can I back my iPhone up at a hard drive off my laptop?

My MacBook has no space for my iPhone to backup. Can I back my iPhone up at a hard drive off my laptop?

Posted on Jul 2, 2018 10:52 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jul 2, 2018 10:58 PM

No. It backs up to your system volume.


How to Free Up Space on The Hard Drive


  1. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
  2. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
  3. Also, see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
  4. What is 'Other' and 'Purgeable' in About This Mac?
  5. Files That Make Up the 'Other' Storage Category, and How to Remove Them
  6. Free up storage space on your Mac.
  7. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
  8. Be sure to Empty the Trash to recover the space.
  9. Replace the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
  10. Use OmniDiskSweeper or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.
2 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jul 2, 2018 10:58 PM in response to Skiing123

No. It backs up to your system volume.


How to Free Up Space on The Hard Drive


  1. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
  2. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
  3. Also, see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
  4. What is 'Other' and 'Purgeable' in About This Mac?
  5. Files That Make Up the 'Other' Storage Category, and How to Remove Them
  6. Free up storage space on your Mac.
  7. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
  8. Be sure to Empty the Trash to recover the space.
  9. Replace the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
  10. Use OmniDiskSweeper or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

Jul 2, 2018 11:09 PM in response to Skiing123

You can, but you have to move you entire iTunes Library to an external hard drive.

https://www.imore.com/how-move-your-itunes-library-external-hard-drive


Update: Sorry, Kappy is right, the backup files are not located in the iTunes Library

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

So moving the iTunes Library does not move your backups to an external hard drive, but might free up space.

My MacBook has no space for my iPhone to backup. Can I back my iPhone up at a hard drive off my laptop?

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