How to get those large iTunes iOS device backups off your C drive
If you have:
a) a smallish C: drive (say, an SSD)
b) iTunes installed for iOS device backups
c) a need for always-with-you backup/restore via USB (on a laptop, for example)
then this article is for you! Admittedly might be best to put iTunes on some always-on PC, perhaps in a VM, to sync via WiFi. But not all folks are allowed to do that. And some folks can't use iCloud for iOS device backups either. An example would be an iPhone or iPad corporate policy/mandate, for example.
Well, I figure many such folks might be looking for a way to free up that precious C drive space, by moving those large iOS backups off C: to another drive (preferably encrypted).
You are not supported by Apple, or me, in any way by following these instructions.
The simple command appears harmless enough during my testing, and works quite nicely. You can see for yourself by watching the video I created. You will also see that despite my own system's iTunes install on my D: drive, the large (18GB) backups were still on my C: drive space, with a good dive into backups explained at Apple's site, About iOS backups.
It's not hard to do this, using the simple magic of the mklink command. Think symbolic link for NTFS. Nice work-around to a problem Apple hasn't yet solved!
Here's the basic steps I followed, on my Windows 8 64 bit system (same exact steps for Windows 7 64 bit):
1) Close iTunes
2) Move MobileSync to D:
You can drag and drop the MobileSync folder to your D: drive, for example:
C:\Users\_myusername_\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync
to
D:\MobileSync
3) Open a Command Prompt as Administrator
(in Windows 8, easiest to type Win+X, then select "Command Prompt (Admin)"
4) Issued the following command (replace username with your actual username)
mklink /J "C:\Users\_myusername_\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync" d:\MobileSync
5) Issued the following single command to verify it worked
dir "C:\Users\_myusername_\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer"
I could see the <JUNCTION> indicating success, and found that subsequent iTunes backups behaved normally, seen in the walk-through video below.
See also related article:
Your SSD drive will need >20GB free space on C: to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8, here’s some clean-up tips
Sources:
How to change the location of your iPhone backup and iTunes MobileSync Backup folder
How to change iTunes device backups storage location in Windows
Feb 22 2013 Update:
Thanks for feedback from Anonymous, I added quotes to syntax for consistency, added better descriptive text for myusername
All Comments on This Article (9)
Are you using an administrative command prompt, on you Windows 7 system?
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/run-a-command-as-administrator-from-the-windows-vista-run-box/
mklink lives in c:\windows\system32, seen here, but should run from any directory you land in, since that system folder should be in the path. Hope this helps!
IM ON WINDOWS 7 NO MKLINK THE COMMAND PROPMT STARTS WITH C\USERS\DELL>
WHAT DO I DO
IVE ATTEMPED OVER 50 TIMES
Top man. This worked a treat in combination with the use of WinDirStat to find out what was filling the C drive up in the first place. Very grateful for your help.
It actually worked fine without the quotes (since I happen to have no spaces in my path), but you're right, for consistency, looks better. Made the changes, thank you!
Mate, you might want to fix up the syntax of the command.
mklink /J "C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync" d:\MobileSync
should be
mklink /J "C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync" "d:\MobileSync"
Ouch, so local D: drive worked for me, but mapped network drives didn't work for you. Perhaps a robust, always active drive is required. We appreciate the warning!
Thanks for this post! I attempted doing the same for the mobile applications folder though, offloading it to a networked folder and it didn't work at all.
Updated apps and newly downloaded apps were never processed after the download was ended. I ended up syncing my iPad and iPhone against my virtualized WHS2011 (which is one of my "always-on" computers). There are many drawbacks to this solution, but the benefit is that my 100Gb mobile apps library is stored on a single place and gets backed up if I wanted.
This configuration works fine over wired connections with VMware USB passthrough of the devices, but now for wireless syncing.. Wifi syncing was working 10% of the time for me, and as such, I figured I'd better disable it.
Rene
"I get the message Local volumes are require to complete the operation"
in the command prompt when I run the mklink script. I'm using windows 7, 64 bit, any
thoughts?