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What you need to know about backing up your iPhone to an external drive on Windows 10



To give double insurance to your iPhone data you can move iPhone backup to external hard drive or flash drive. However, every time iTunes creates an iPhone backup, a folder of over 7GB will be saved to C drive so it is not a good long-term plan for backing up iPhone.


Here we provide 2 tools to move iPhone data to an external hard drive on Windows 10, 8, 7 computer or laptop. You can either iTunes or powerful backup software. But you may need to change the backup location if you want to backup with iTunes. And the steps would be completed.




How to back up your iPhone to an external drive on Windows 10



Changing iTunes backup location is a little complicated. There are no options in iTunes to do that, so you can only use Windows CMD to force iTunes to save iPhone backup to another partition. If you just need the pictures, it will be very easy to backup iPhone photos to external hard drive in Windows 10/8/7/11.


Step 3. Open Windows File Explorer and then go to C:\Users\[PC name]\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\ MobileSync. That's the default location where iTunes saves your iPhone backup on computer.


To avoid these issues, you can turn to FoneTool, which is professional iPhone backup software. It can be the best way to backup an iPhone to an external hard drive on Windows 11, 10, 8, 7 PC easily with its intuitive interface. You can move your iPhone to an HDD, SSD, USB drive within a few clicks.


Download FoneTool to computer, plug your external hard drive into computer, connect iPhone to computer with a USB cable. We will guide you on how to backup iPhone photos, videos, contacts, music, and other data to external hard drive in Windows 11/10/8/7 computer.


Step 2. Click Backup Storage Path to choose your external hard drive as the backup location. If you need, you can enable the backup encryption. Then click Start Backup.


Step 3. Click the Backup Storage Path change iPhone backup location to external hard drive on Windows 10 and then click Start Backup to copy everything you have selected to external drive. In this step, you could backup iPhone to NAS or network drive if you have mapped it into a local drive.


Storage shortage on computer might drive you to backup iPhone to external hard drive on Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, and save the backup files to external drive makes them safer and easy to use. These 2 methods can be also applied for backing up files from iPad to external drive.


FoneTool is the most convenient iPhone backup software to backup or move iOS/iPhone files to an external hard drive on Windows 10 computer. It supports all the popular external hard drives and export what you want with one click. You can also change iTunes backup location but it is a little complicated.


This has its advantages, not the least of which is being able to make regular backups without plugging in your iPhone. The biggest problem with this approach, however, is storage. Backing up to iCloud uses your limited iCloud storage. The larger the backup files, the less space you have for essentials, including your camera photos, although you may wish to move your photo collection to the best online storage for photos instead (read our guide on how to backup photos on Mac).


The process for backing up an iPhone to an external hard drive on Mac is pretty similar for users with macOS Mojave or older operating systems that, like Windows, use iTunes for iPhone backups. If you use a Mac with macOS Catalina, the process differs, using Finder instead.


Do you prefer to manually backup your iPhone? Share your iPhone backup tips and tricks in the comments below, and in case you need it, we also have a guide on how to backup your Mac. Thanks for reading.


Quit iTunesThen find (in 10.13 its in /Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/ ) and rename your old backup folder, for example Old_BackupOpen terminal and create symlink like this. Write:ln -s (then dragndrop the folder you want to back up to) (dragndrop the folder where it was back upped before)


Are you an iPhone user and you are using Windows 11 (or Windows 10)? If you have lots of stuff in your iPhone, space on Windows will run low pretty fast, given that the iTunes backup includes photos, videos, apps etc.


However, Apple still hasn't made it possible yet to store an iPhone backup to an external hard drive. Well, in this guide, I am going to show you how to store all your iPhone backups on your external hard drive and also, backup your iPhone to your external hard drive automatically!


If you don't have an external storage device in your hands and you are looking to purchase a new one for this purpose, then I have created another article where I explain the best external hard drives options and how to read the specs of each external hard drive here:


This will give you an idea on how much space you will need to have available on your external hard drive. For instance, in my case, my iPhone capacity is 256GB and I have available 155GB. This means that the backup should occupy about 100GB. Given that Apple is compressing the backup to occupy less space, it should only occupy about 70GB. However, I would encourage you to have double or triple amount of GB available (in my case, about 210GB), in order for the backups to be done to avoid any potential errors.


Now is the perfect time to connect your external hard drive (or USB stick) to your computer. Now we need to create a folder on our external hard drive "MobileSync" and copy paste the Backup folder within the new "MobileSync" we have created on the external hard drive.


Please, keep in mind that the letters at the beginning of each path may be different. To avoid this issue, be sure to include the correct letters, so the first path between the quotes (" ") indicates the path to the Backup folder in your computer and the second path, indicates the path to your Backup folder in your external hard drive. Hence, sure the letters correspond to your Local drive and external hard drive respectively.


Awesome! Now every future backup will be done and stored on your external hard drive! Now why not go and give it a shot? Launch iTunes, connect your iPhone and back it up on your computer. Now the latest backup should be stored on your external hard drive.


After a while, messages, pictures and videos from your iPhone can consume hundreds of megabytes, or even gigabytes, of storage space. Whenever you back up your iPhone to your business PC with iTunes -- which you should do regularly -- files transferred to the computer take up the same considerable amount of space on your hard drive. While there are many third-party apps that enable you to copy iPhone backups to an external hard drive, a little-known Windows command enables you to use iTunes to back up the phone to a USB hard drive directly.


Connect the external USB hard drive you want to use to store videos from the iPhone to the computer. Wait a couple of seconds for Windows to detect the device and configure it for use. If Windows displays an AutoPlay window or asks you what to do with the drive, close the window.


Change the "yourWindowsusername" variable to the actual username of your Windows account. Change the "f" in "f:\iPhoneBackup" to the drive letter assigned by Windows to the external hard drive. Change the "iPhoneBackup" variable to the name of the folder on the hard drive in which you want to save the backup.


Press "Windows-E" to open File Explorer if you closed it. Click "Computer," and then double-click the drive letter of the external hard drive. Open the designated folder on the hard drive to view the backup file from iTunes.


You can restore your backups whenever you need them. Just follow Step 1 and Step 2 above, then go to Summary > Restore Backup. If your backups have been encrypted, you will need to enter your password to access your files.


Locating the backups stored in iTunes on your computer is easy. In iTunes, go to Edit > Preferences > Devices. This will present a list of the backups on your device. Any backups you have encrypted will have an icon of a lock next to them in the list.


For extra security, consider backing up your iPhone to an external hard drive. Ideally, use this kind of backup medium in addition to your local backup on your computer and cloud storage.


Cloud storage adds another layer of protection for your backups. Even if something happens to your computer, your files in cloud storage will still be safe because they will be encrypted and stored remotely.


With Dropbox, your files will always be secure and quick to restore anytime you need them. Alternatively, Dropbox Backup makes it even easier to automatically back up your files to the cloud, so you can quickly and smoothly recover from whatever life throws your way.


Then run iTunes, and it thinks it is working in the old "Backup" folder, but it is actiually working in the "f:\iphonebackup" folder. You can even move the contents (included folders) of "Backup" to "f:\iphonebackup", and they will show up in iTunes as backups. The new virtual link shows up as a folder with a link "arrow" icon on it. It can be deleted like any file, but this does not affect the target folder on your external drive.


This doesn't answer my question- I already have my iTunes Library on an external drive, however the iPhone BACKUP file defaults to the C: drive and it doesn't give you the option to change it. I need to backup the phone itself to the external drive, not the iTunes library.


"You need to point iTunes to the library on the external drive. Hold down the OPTION key while opening iTunes. You will be prompted to select a library. Navigate to the external drive to select the iTunes library you wish to use. From that point on when you sync the phone the backups will go to the iTunes library on the external drive." 2ff7e9595c


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