How to back up your phone to an external hard drive using terminal

Clear up some space on your HD

Backing up your phone can take up a lot of space of your computer. Especially when you’re me, who bought the 2015 MacBook Pro with 250gb of memory. I pretty much carry dongles around with me like car keys because I am so dependent on my external drives.

Here’s how to link your iPhone backup to an external drive using terminal. (It’s really easy).

Step 1 — Make Folder on External.

Create a folder on your external drive to hold the backups. I named mine “iPhone Backup”

Step 2 — Copy.

Open your Finder and locate the folder where your backups are stored. The quickest way to do this is to open a new window and tap Command+Shift+G to enter a path. The path to the directory where your iPhone backups are stored is ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/ . Press enter and then locate the folder named “Backup” and copy it.

Note: This is where iTunes thinks your backups will be stored. Do not delete the backup until you have moved the files to the external.

Step 3 — Paste.

Paste the folder inside of the new folder you just made on your external drive. Now you can delete the original “Backup” folder on your computer. Check that the backups are working in iTunes.

Step 4 — Link the local Backup folder to the external.

Now we are going to create a link between the local folder and the one you just created on the external. Open terminal and type this command. Be sure to add in the name of your external drive and the name of the new folder you created on it.

ln -s /Volumes/YourExternalDriveName/NewFolder/Backup/ ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync

What this does is tell the local Backup folder (where iTunes thinks Backups are) to link to the new folder that you made on the external drive.

Note: Your phone will only backup if the external is plugged in.

Step 5 — Test.

Open your Finder again and navigate to the original backup folder ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/ . What you should see is a basic file with an arrow signaling its link to another location.

Now you’re done! Make sure to check in iTunes that your backups still show up and you’re all good. Happy space saving!