It is so important to take your device backup, but sometimes taking device backup is very difficult or impossible. When your computer or Mac doesn’t have enough space keep your iPhone Backup, which is depending on different things such as size of iPhone backup or taking backup multiple times. So how to solve such scenario, here we are with another easy guide on back up iPhone to external drive on Mac. Read more for further details.
If your computer or Mac running low disk space then backup your device to external drive is definitely required. All you need to learn couple of commands and functions to make thing easier. You must have an iPhone or iPad a USB connecting cable and an external drive.
Easy Guide On Back Up iPhone To External Drive On Mac
Just follow these steps to put your iPhone backup on external drive:
- Connect the external storage drive with enough space with your Mac. Just create a new folder named “iPhoneiTunesBackups” in order to find the folder easily later on
- Command + Spacebar and type Finder to open Finder and open a new Finder Window by File -> New Finder Window
- In new window type “Command+Shift+G” and type following command:
~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/
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This will take you directly to the folder we will be working with. Select the folder titled “Backup” and create a copy
- Now on external drive locate the newly created folder “iPhoneiTunesBackups”. We are going to paste the copy from Step 3 into the folder on our drive
- After copying the folder, go back to ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/ by typing the above command into Finder, rename the folder as BackupOld or whatever you like
- Open Terminal window and enter following command:
ln -s /Volumes/MYPASSPORT/iPhoneiTunesBackups/Backup/ ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync
- You will need to change the MYPASSPORT and iPhoneiTunesBackups after Volumes to match the name of your external drive and the name of the folder on your external drive. Once you have checked and confirmed, just hit enter and Quit Terminal
- Now everything is done, just open new Finder window type Command+Shift+G. In the blank text field enter: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/ you will see the Old Backup folder as well as the new, copied Backup folder with an arrow pointing to it means linked to external drive folder now
Now connect your device with your computer, iTunes will be open automatically find your iPhone and in Backups section, click This computer and then click Back Up Now. The new backup will automatically start saving on external drive
Once everything is completed just check the time stamp of each back up every time you back up your iOS device to your computer.
(Source: iPhonehacks)
If you want to revert back this whole procedure, just open the ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/ path and delete the folder with arrow. Then rename the folder back to Backup and that’s all now next you back up iPhone the backup will again store on your Mac or computer.
