I was able to get it done. Thank you for putting this together. I would suggest you add the two comand promt link texts to the description section of the video, instead of forcing folks to pull up your web arcticle.
This one actually works! I had to create the folder "backup" in the mobilesync folder on my external drive. Make sure you follow it exactly and change the letter (E or F etc.) for your external drive.
You don't mention it in the video, but it's on the web page - When doing the Command Prompt segment, you need to make sure the code has your proper designations for your drives. For example; my external drive needed to be changed to "D" from "E" in the code.
@techlunar - I backed up my iPhone just as you taught to my hard drive. I dropped my phone in a lake (132 feet), received my replacement phone, and now need to restore the backup from the hard drive to the replacement phone. Do you have a tutorial video on how to do this? Thank you!
So with slight edits to command prompt ie my external drive is the E drive, this worked fantastically! It took a bit of time for ALL the files I had so patience was important. Many thanks again for his very helpful solution.
Excellent tutorial! The only change I required was to use a symbolic link instead of junction. Thanks for this video. I've been stuck for months needing to backup my phone to an external drive via iTunes on Windows.
Hey I just want to say great video and thank you so much. I was looking to back up my iPhone 8 plus with 198GB used and I couldn't back it up on my 120GB MacBook Pro. My only option was to turn to my gaming HP Omen laptop and honestly it didn't work the first time because I didn't have any previous backup to copy to my external drive. I tried again and this time I backed up my iPhone on my C drive first and then copied it to my external drive and after that it worked 110%. Thank You George!
Great job & video. Thank you. Following your instructions, I was able to save my iPhone backup data via iTunes to my external HD as my internal SSD HD was only 64Gb...
I can’t do this. It comes up “there is not enough space on windows. You need an additional 24.9GB to copy these files.” I’m using a 5TB external hard drive with a cheap small laptop…?
Hi, George! Your tutorial works perfectly. I just have one question, how do I revert it back to the old settings? I want to backup my new iPhone to my Computer this time. But I keep on getting an error that my backup is corrupt. For sure it's because I configured the backup via command prompt. Your reply is highly appreciated. Thanks!
tyvm! It's so unfortunate that Apple doesn't provide this much needed function directly in the iTunes UI. But, thanks entirely to you my friend, I can finally do a full backup of my iPhone 15 Pro Max! Thanks a million & kudos!!
The method you showed on mac was working perfectly. Now suddenly my mac has started auto ejecting external hdd or ssd..i tried with a new ssd too. Can't even use the capture image feature.
I will reply and state I had to do this twice, and restarted my Itunes and unplugged my phone because when I first tried it and attempted to backup my phone I still was receiving the "Not enough storage" error message even though the file junction was properly created
Hi george ! After creating path to external hard drive , . I cannot open the "backup folder with an arrow " in mu local drive. Error occurs. However when i try to start backing up using itunes. There occurs an error as well. What to do. Please answer thank you
Not working and cannot figure out why, when I copy-paste the command in the Command prompt and change to info to "admin" and drive F (my external drive), I receive "Cannot create a file when that file already exists" :( I've tried renaming the MobileSync and other random folder names on the F drive, and I receive the same response in the dialog box. UGH!
Would this still work if I'm switching the external hard drive from one computer to a laptop and vice versa? Or, does the external hard drive is assigned to ONE specific computer/laptop?
now if i have to restore this backup on my iphone is it going to be just simple tap on the itunes to resore while making my external hard drive connected?
Everything went well, but when I tried to go past the command prompt step it would not create the new link back up file it kept saying "local volumes are required to complete the operation". Any idea what that could be/mean?
Hey, i was having the same problem, what i did was i looked at the E before the last mobilesync/backup and replaced it with a D or whichever drive you are fowarding the information towards. This problem acurs when you are fowarding information to a drive that doesnt exist
I am probably being very stupid but when I copy the link into the command prompt it says you cannot create a link that already exists. But it doesn't exist
Hi George - Thanks for posting this - very helpful. When I am looking at my local drive, it still looks like it's using space on that drive...when I look at size on disc, it shows 6.54GB. My goal was to have the iphone backup on my external hard drive only, not on my local drive. Any suggestions for how to accomplish this? Thanks for any advice you can share!
I would suggest pulling up two tabs, one of the local drive and one from the external drive, then copy the folder from local and paste it into the external, or click and drag the file folder from local to external. This should start copying everything over to the external. Once that’s done check your files are properly moved over, I like to plug into another computer and make sure it’s pulling up and not corrupted. Then I can delete the local drive and my backup is on my external.
my computer said original backup file was too large to be deleted into the Recycle Bin. I don't want to delete it permanently though. Is there another way?
I don’t have an apple computer and don’t want to use iTunes. How do I backup my iPhone 11 to an external device using windows without iTunes or apple computer?
Alright, question! I did not have any previous backups on my PC before following these steps - problem was when I tried to backup the phone, there was not enough storage on the PC. So I bought an external hard drive and followed these steps, sans transferring the backups to the hard drive. I then backed up my phone. iTunes says that the phone was backed up successfully... but the backup is not located on the external hard drive, and it is not in the MobileSync folder on my PC either. Where the heck could it be?!
Hi, I have used this but there seems to be a limit of being able to store 20GB into a external hard disk. Could you clarify if such an issue has happened to you and how did you solve it?
Exactly. Every video I've seen does not address that problem. What we're after is a solution to copy to an external hard dive because we DON'T have even space on our C-Drive... obviously! If anyone has an ACTUAL solution, do tell, thanks
@@arthurnovak577 I backed up about 10 gigs (my remaining space on C drive) and was able to follow this tutorial. In reality I just needed one byte of data for the path to have been created. Worst case scenario you delete some files. You don't have a full drive of direly necessary files, lol. Blows my mind how people who don't know how to solve problems can use computers
I have windows 10. I would like to route I Tunes to backup my phone to my external SSD i'm worried. I won't be able to follow these instructions good enough can someone chat with me thru it?
![Backup iPhone (or iPad) on External Hard Drive [for Windows] - Step by Step](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
