IPhone – How to change the location where iTunes stores backups of iPhones

backupdata synchronizationiphoneituneswindows

When I sync my iPhone 4 with my iTunes, the latter starts to make a backup before doing the actual sync. This backup often takes a lot of time to make, which is very annoying. What is even worse (imo) is that the backup is stored on my C-partition (where my WinXP Pro sp3 is installed and running). I consider a backup being data, and I wish to store data in a different location than the one used for my operating system.

Searching the web, I found many people who were mad at the waste of time the mandatory backup caused, and I even learnt how to prevent the backup process from starting while syncing. I could not, however, find any information for how to re-direct the location of backups made by iTunes, so I could choose a different partition than the default one.

Could anyone in this forum advise how to accomplish this?

Thanks for any help.

Wilbour

Best Answer

For Mac OS X, I had to use this guide: http://osxdaily.com/2011/03/05/how-to-move-the-iphoneipad-itunes-backup-folder-to-an-external-hard-drive/ and create a symbolic link to move the Backup folder, but it worked great.

The main thing is to move the Backup folder to an external drive/partition that has more space and then create a symbolic link like so:

ln -s /Volumes/YourExternalDrive/Backup/ ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

Then execute a Backup by syncing via iTunes to try it out.