Change the Location of Your iPhone Backup | Oliver Aaltonen's Blog | aaltonen.us

Are those iOS backups taking up too much space on your boot drive? While there’s no built-in function in the iTunes preferences menu for moving the archive folder, it’s a simple procedure on most platforms. While others have mentioned this in the past, I haven’t come across a single page with instructions for all major operating systems. For reference, the instructions are below:

Mac OS X

• Close iTunes
• Move the existing ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ folder to the destination drive (for example, named BigExternalDrive)
• Open a command prompt by launching Terminal and create a symbolic link using a command similar to the one below, replacing /Volumes/BigExternalDrive/Backup with the path to your destination:

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1	ln -s /Volumes/BigExternalDrive/Backup/ ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup

Windows Vista and Windows 7

• Close iTunes
• Move the existing C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\ folder to the destination drive (for example, D:\)
• Open a command prompt and create an NTFS junction point using a command similar to the one below, replacing D:\Backup with the path to your destination:

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1	mklink /J "C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup" "D:\Backup"

Windows XP

• Close iTunes
• Download and extract this junction utility to your Desktop
• Move the existing C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\ folder to the destination drive (for example, D:\)
• Open a command prompt an NTFS junction point using a command similar to the one below, replacing D:\Backup with the path to your destination:

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1	cd Desktop

2	junction "C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup" "D:\Backup"

References:

• Apple: iPhone and iPod touch: About backups
• TheiPhoneGuru.net: Change the Location of Your iTunes Backups on Windows Vista or 7 (iPhone and iPad)
• SuperUser: How to change iPhone backup location on windows ?

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