This post was last updated on January 24th, 2019 at 05:55 pm
This will come handy for those who are using MacBook(with OS X Yosemite and later). I own one that was manufactured in late 2013 and it came with just a 128gb of hard disk storage. You will agree with me that this is too little considering the fact that I am having more than 45gb worth of data/files on my iPhone. On the good side, I have a 1tb external hard drive which is having more than 400gb of free space. In this tutorial, I will be talking about easy ways to move iOS devices back up to an external storage drive. It is a fool-proof guide.
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Important Notice: Some Mac OS e.g OS X would not allow writing into an NTFS drive by default. You need to take some steps to remove these restrictions. therefore I will advise you to read this guide if you are faced with this problem already.
How to move iOS devices Backup to an external drive-Works with all iOS devices and iTunes Versions
By way of clarification, by iOS devices/iDevices, i mean such devices as iPhone, iPad, and iPod. Need I remind you that this works the same with all versions of Mac OS X, all and all versions of iTunes. The location of the iOS backup files has stayed the same on the Mac. Technically you could do this with a network volume or an SD card as well, However, a traditional external hard disk is the focus here. Y
Move iOS devices backup to an external location: Important the Steps
- First off, Quit iTunes if you haven’t done so already
- Secondly, Connect the external hard drive to the Mac and make sure it is detected by your mac. Now, make sure you take note of all existing folders in the drive. We will create our backup here.
- Next, open any folder or finder on your mac>>selectGO>>then copy the codes below into the space provided.. the pictures below explains more:
then copy the following codes and paste it into the space provided:
~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/
4. Now, Locate the“Backup” folder in this directory and copy that to the root of your external drive. In my case, the name of my external drive is “Seagate“.
5. Next step; Go back to the original location of the Backup folder (~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/), and rename “Backup” to “Backup-Old”, or simply delete it (Please do not delete if you have not copied it to the external drive.
6. Now, Launch the Terminal Applications on your Mac. You can see this under Utilities. Alternatively, you can also use the search option on Mac to search for terminal. After opening it, type in the following command line:
ln -s /Volumes/seagate/Backup/ ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup
Short Explanation
7. In the above example, ‘DriveName’ would be the name of the new backup location. In this example, the external hard drive is named “seagate”, and the iTunes backup folder on that volume is ‘Backup’, so adjust those according to your own specifications. Your external drive name needn’t be similar to mine.
8. Quit Terminal, then confirm the symbolic link that was created earlier by returning to “~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/” . In Finder, the “Backup” folder should now be a generic file with an arrow on it, signifying there is now a direct link between that “Backup” and the location specified on the external hard disk as shown below:
9. Once again, open iTunes and connect your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to the computer. As usual, select the device within iTunes, select ‘This Computer’ as the backup location (optionally encrypting the backup), and then choose “Back Up Now” to start the device backup process to the external drive.
10. Now, when the backup has completed in iTunes, double-check everything is in order by going to the folder on the external drive and confirming there is a “Backup” folder containing hexadecimal named and subdirectory – this is the backup made from iTunes of the device as shown below:
That is all. One you have confirmed that the files have been linked for backup on your external drives, you can delete the backup folder from the mac drive. I hope this has helped.
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