A client approached me to inquire about using cloud storage for, well, everything. They wanted their laptop to dock with a USB hard drive that was synced with DropBox (cloud storage). Since they have an iPhone, naturally they wanted to see about storing iPhone backups in the cloud.
My first thought was, your backups need to be Encrypted. After that, store them wherever you’d like! Of course, if you don’t wish to store them locally (Apple default save directory), then you can make one simple change to your system which will redirect where iTunes stores those backups. To make this happen, we use a Symbolic link – which is a type of Shortcut that tells the File System to look in another place for the folder iTunes is expecting to save your backup in. It’s completely transparent to iTunes.
For PC
iTunes backups are stored in “C:\Users\*USERNAME*\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup”
To move this folder’s location:
- Copy the folder to the new location (for example: the DropBox folder on your USB drive)
- Either keep the original folder name of Backup or rename to something more descriptive. I like “iPhone Backups”
- Go to the original folder location “C:\Users\*USERNAME*\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\”
- Either delete the folder “Backup” or rename it “BackupOld” to keep it
- Press Shift+Right Click and select the option to open a Command window here
- Type the following command:
mklink /J "%APPDATA%\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup" and "<DropBox path>:\iPhone Backups"
- Close Command prompt
- Launch iTunes and see if it locates the backup
Note: Make sure you check your cloud storage for the backup as well. It may take a while to upload.
For Mac instructions, please use this excellent resource: https://support.imazing.com/hc/en-us/articles/203504123-Storing-your-iPhone-Backups-on-an-Alternate-Location
