Is there a way to transport the Data of an iPhone / iPad Backup and the saved apps to an external hard drive?
I'm using iTunes 12.3 on a MacBookProRetina with Yosemite
IPhone – Export iPhone or iPad Backup to an external hard drive
backupipadiphoneitunesmacos
Related Solutions
Backing up your purchases is one approach. Since iTunes provides access to your prior purchases (as long as they have not been removed by Apple or the Developer), you can safely delete them from your computer. That won't be enough though. You'll need to tell iTunes not to automatically download them. Here are the steps you could take:
- In iTunes, go the iTunes Preferences ( or ⌘, ) and select the Store tab.
- Under Automatic Downloads, assert that the Apps checkbox is unchecked. (see image below)
- Delete the mobile Apps
Quit iTunes.
Move your current backups to your external drive:
mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup /Volumes/[drive]/Symlink your backup folder:
ln -s /Volumes/[drive]/ ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup
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Best Answer
Yes - Apple documents the folder in which iTunes saves backups here:
Apple doesn't make tools to poke at those files and export the data, however.
The apps themselves are saved in the iTunes library - so you can move them easily. The data embedded in apps depend on how the developer of that app chose to store them. Many use
sqliteand xml and other standard data formats, so it's not unreasonable to get at many of the files - some are even stored with odd names, but still the correct image and sound and movie file formats.