How to Find Your Current Backup on MacOS
Because of the complexity, we’ve broken down what needs to be done before moving your iPhone backup to an external hard drive into multiple steps.
First, you need to know where the backup is stored on your Mac. It’s not hard to find.
In the Mac Dock, select Finder. Go to the Locations section of Finder and choose your iPhone. If you use an older version of macOS than macOS Catalina, use iTunes to find your iPhone instead. Click Manage Backups. Long-press the Control key and click the backup name you want. It may be named “Backup” or it may be a long string of letters and numbers. In the drop-down menu, select Show in Finder. You’ve successfully tracked down the backup.
How to Move iPhone Backup to an External Hard Drive
Now you’ve found your backup, you need to move it to your external hard drive. This step is pretty simple.
Go to the Finder window that displays your iOS backup. Select the Backup folder. It will either be called Backup or consist of a series of numbers and letters. Drag it to the external hard drive under Locations in the Finder sidebar. You may have to enter your administrator password to do this. Rename the iOS backup folder on the external hard drive to ios_backup. Switch back to the original finder window and rename the old backup to old_backup.
Can You Change Where Your Mac Saves iPhone Backups?
If you want, you can permanently change where the Mac saves your iPhone backups. The process involves being comfortable changing a few background settings on your Mac via the Terminal command. If you’ve never dealt with Terminal before, it can be intimidating as it’s powerful and not exactly user-friendly.
Changing Mac’s location for iPhone backups is the trickiest part of this process. To always have your iPhone back up to an external hard drive, you need to create a symlink so that your Mac knows where to look for future backups.
It’s not hard to change the location if you follow these steps, but it does require some concentration. You also need to change some permissions on your Mac first to get to the result.
Update Permissions on Your Mac
Here’s how to change those permissions.
Click the Apple icon. Select System Preferences. Click Security & Privacy. Select Privacy. Click the Lock to make changes. Enter your admin password. Select Full Disk Access. Click the plus (+) sign. Scroll through your applications and select Terminal.
Change iPhone Backup Locations
Now you’ve completed that step, here’s how to change iPhone backup location on Mac.
Open Terminal. Paste this code, ensuring you change the relevant parts to the name of your external hard drive. ln -s /Volumes/yourexternalharddrivename/ios_backup ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup/ Select Return. Close Terminal. You’ve now made a symlink between the new folder and the old folder that contains your backup.
How Do I Know the New iPhone Backup Worked?
When dealing with backups, you want to be certain that you’ve done it all correctly. Here’s how to double check.
From the iPhone Location in Finder, choose Back Up Now. Once the backup is complete, open the new ios_backup folder on your external hard drive and check that the Date Modified next to it has changed to the current time.
How to Disable Automatic Backups
The downside to having a backup on your external hard drive is if you don’t always have the external hard drive plugged in, you can have issues. Here’s how to disable automatic backups so you only back up your iPhone when you want to do it.
Open Finder. In the Locations section, select your iPhone. Uncheck the Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected box. Don’t forget to manually back up regularly.
