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how do I back up my iPhone to an external hard drive?

Is there a way to back up my iPhone 7 Plus to an external hard drive without moving my whole iTunes library onto it? I can't back up to my iMac bc it says there isn't enough free space. Thanks for the help!

iPhone 7 Plus

Posted on Aug 14, 2018 3:27 PM

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Posted on Sep 23, 2018 9:56 AM

You can, but Apple doesn't want you to know it. Create an iTunes Backup folder on your external hard drive. Create an alias in your MobileSync Backup location by typing into TERMINAL the following: (where YOURDRIVE is the name of the external drive you want to go to) Apple then thinks this is its backup location and everything is stored there.


ln -s /Volumes/YOURDRIVE/iTunesBackup/Backup/ ~/Library/Application\Support/MobileSync/Backup

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Question marked as Best reply

Sep 23, 2018 9:56 AM in response to panchososa694

You can, but Apple doesn't want you to know it. Create an iTunes Backup folder on your external hard drive. Create an alias in your MobileSync Backup location by typing into TERMINAL the following: (where YOURDRIVE is the name of the external drive you want to go to) Apple then thinks this is its backup location and everything is stored there.


ln -s /Volumes/YOURDRIVE/iTunesBackup/Backup/ ~/Library/Application\Support/MobileSync/Backup

how do I back up my iPhone to an external hard drive?

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