How to change the location where iTunes stores backups of iPhones?

Question

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

Answer 1

Try this tutorial.

Answer 2

The actual backup iTunes makes stores it in this folder if you on computer

Mac OS: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
Windows XP: %AppData%\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
Windows Vista: %AppData%\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
Windows 7: %AppData%\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

There is a GUID directory under it, you may have two since you chose new iPhone, or it might have overwritten the existing one, take a look there. If you have two then maybe the other one is your old one. Youd need to go into your iPhone and delete the iTunes_control directory and reconnect it to iTunes and see if it lets you pick that backup.

If you want to transfer iphone to computer, just follow these tutorials:
For PC: How to transfer or backup iPhone contents to Windows
For Mac: How to transfer contents from iPhone to Mac OS

Taylor B.

Answer 3

iTunes does not have a mechanism to store it's data (your backups) outside the home folder for your user.

This is more an operating system issue than an itunes issue. On mac there are lots of options to set up a user folder elsewhere or use aliases and sym links to redirect certain folders to a different location. Most of these links don't work across volumes on a mac. Sorry to play ping pong with this question but it might get a better audience in super user as the best place to learn how to have the windows os fake a program to store files in an alternate location.

You might also look in the registry to see if iTunes has a variable for this Location that you could try to change.

The good news is that apple documents the locations of iTunes files as well as mobile backup files so you can plan and play around to see what works for you. You might just have to clean out old backups to make enough space. My backup folder for a 32g iPad and four phones (one 8, one 16 and two 32) only takes up 8 Gb on disk.

Answer 4

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.