Back up iPhone to an external hard drive, M2, Sequoia

MartinR wrote:

Symlinks may, in general, still work in Tahoe. But I'm not so sure about symlinks linking locations in ~/Library to other drives or volumes.

They do. Just did it myself on my M1 MacBook Air. I symlinked the MobileSync folder in the Library folder out to my external drive. Worked perfectly fine once I gave Terminal permissions for Full Disk Access.

At least, for me, I was always able to symlink ~/LibraryMail and ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync to another drive up to and including Catalina. But not in Monterey or later. (I skipped Big Sur but I do have Macs running Sonoma & Sequoia.)

It should still work on those, but may require Full Disk access as mentioned.

And ever since MS moved the Outlook mail folder from ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data to ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OfficeOutlook/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles I can no longer symlink or alias the Outlook mail folder to any other drive or volume.

Odd, but that may just be Outlook limiting it.

The common factor seems to be more security around ~/Library. If there's something I've missed that would enable these symlinks again, I'd love to know what it is.

Again, Full Disk Access in System Settings ➜ Privacy & Security. Flip the switch for Terminal there should be what it needs.

If you aren'r running as an admin, you may need to "sudo" the command though.

Make sure you are spelling it correctly. It's MobileSync, no H.

And verify Terminal has been granted Full Disk Access in Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access

Phil0124 wrote:

iMazing is good and can make it easier to get specific data out of a device and back it up, but I don't believe it can restore the entire backup onto the iPhone.

Yes it can, main reason of existence of the product, not a byte lost. Been there, done that, on two different situations between 7 different devices: 1) when the "system data" part on your device gets too big for whatever unknown reason, back it up, wipe it to "as new" and have iMazing restore it to what it was minus the "system data" crud, or 2) new or different device, back up the old, plug in the new and migrate (restore) your stuff. The backing-up part can be done wired or wireless via Wi-Fi; the restore I prefer not to risk it and rather speed things up via wired connection.

Limitations? iMazing needs to be installed with all the necessary permissions and adequate room to work, all devices have to be registered to the same AppleID and the receiving device has to be at an *OS level equal or above to the origin device (i.e., cannot downgrade).

bug jah wrote:

I was trying to do what this user asked about

Back up iPhone to an external hard drive - Apple Community

The top reply here from @Bostanok was upvoted a lot. It involved making a symbolic link in the Library folder (Application Support/MobileSynch) where iPhone backups are stored, a brilliant solution.

But I tried it just now on my machine and it doesn't work. I get an error in Terminal that says "Operation not permitted"

That link you provided started from a query that was posted in February 2023, when Ventura was the latest MacOS. The "solution" (symbolic link) was posted in February 2024, when Sonoma was the latest MacOS. Now we are on Sequoia or Tahoe ... do you believe that that old posted solution will still work almost two years later?

You are entrusting your backup of everything on your iPhone to this symbolic link still working, and perhaps still working the way you want after additional MacOS updates. Remember: a backup only works if you can reliably restore from it. Personally, I would only trust an Apple supported solution when it comes to backups. How will you test this method to convince yourself that it is reliable and works and will be resilient in the future as Apple evolves both its Macs and iPhone operating systems?

I backup up everything to iCloud. I am fine with the price, it is as bulletproof a backup as you can get for an iPhone. I also have all Messages and Photos on the phone stored in iCloud.

By the way, John Galt posted a different solution (in your link) that I feel is more resilient than using a symbolic link. He suggested installing MacOS onto your external drive, then booting from that drive and when booted from that drive, connect the phone and back it up to that external boot drive.

Phil0124 wrote:

The symlink option has always worked. It's perfectly safe and still works in Tahoe just fine. There's nothing to be worried about, and it's a fine solution to move backups outside of the built-in drive.

No reason to worry about it. It works and has been proven to work over the years.

Symbolic links won't just stop working, but they do depend on the external drive they point to, to be connected and accessible.

Symlinks may, in general, still work in Tahoe. But I'm not so sure about symlinks linking locations in ~/Library to other drives or volumes.

At least, for me, I was always able to symlink ~/LibraryMail and ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync to another drive up to and including Catalina. But not in Monterey or later. (I skipped Big Sur.)

And ever since MS moved the Outlook mail folder from ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data to ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.OfficeOutlook/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles I can no longer symlink or alias the Outlook mail folder to any other drive or volume.

The common factor seems to be more security around ~/Library. If there's something I've missed that would enable these symlinks again, I'd love to know what it is.

In my experience smlinks to/from locations in ~/Library have become difficult to impossible since Monterey due to the increased security measures in macOS. The last version of macOS that I was successful doing symlinks for Mail, Outlook & MobileSync was Catalina.

Courcoul wrote:

While the original discussion has been closed, let's take a gander here...

MartinR wrote:

I have been through all that. Admin account; Full Disk Access for Terminal, Mail, Outlook; Ignore Permissions on external drive; correct syntax for the symlinks, etc.

After you enabled Full Disk Access for Terminal and created the symlink for your MobileSync folder did you try doing a backup of an iOS device? Did it work?

Let's say after going thru all the hoops and hurdles you manage to persuade all the gizmos to cooperate and deposit something on the external drive. Later on something untoward occurs to the phone and you desire to reconstrruct it. Can and how do you do it with whatever got into the hard drive? After all, that is the main goal oof a backup, is it not?

The Backup is fully accessible by finder and it can and will use it to restore the iPhone, unless something changed in the interim, like the symlink getting deleted.

But if you need to restore the backup from a different computer, you would need to recreate the symlink, and it should at that point allow the Mac to see the existing backup folder.

Might I suggest automating the backup and later full or partial recovery or access to any and all data (i.e., the full WhatsApp contents) by means of the following product: https://imazing.com/ Been using it for quite awhile and has saved my iGadgets on more than one occasion. Yes, you can store the backups in whatever storage available to the computer you like.

iMazing is good and can make it easier to get specific data out of a device and back it up, but I don't believe it can restore the entire backup onto the iPhone.

While the original discussion has been closed, let's take a gander here...

MartinR wrote:

I have been through all that. Admin account; Full Disk Access for Terminal, Mail, Outlook; Ignore Permissions on external drive; correct syntax for the symlinks, etc.

After you enabled Full Disk Access for Terminal and created the symlink for your MobileSync folder did you try doing a backup of an iOS device? Did it work?

Let's say after going thru all the hoops and hurdles you manage to persuade all the gizmos to cooperate and deposit something on the external drive. Later on something untoward occurs to the phone and you desire to reconstrruct it. Can and how do you do it with whatever got into the hard drive? After all, that is the main goal oof a backup, is it not?

Might I suggest automating the backup and later full or partial recovery or access to any and all data (i.e., the full WhatsApp contents) by means of the following product: https://imazing.com/ Been using it for quite awhile and has saved my iGadgets on more than one occasion. Yes, you can store the backups in whatever storage available to the computer you like.

The symlink option has always worked. It's perfectly safe and still works in Tahoe just fine. There's nothing to be worried about, and it's a fine solution to move backups outside of the built-in drive.

No reason to worry about it. It works and has been proven to work over the years.

Symbolic links won't just stop working, but they do depend on the external drive they point to, to be connected and accessible.

I have been through all that. Admin account; Full Disk Access for Terminal, Mail, Outlook; Ignore Permissions on external drive; correct syntax for the symlinks, etc.

After you enabled Full Disk Access for Terminal and created the symlink for your MobileSync folder did you try doing a backup of an iOS device? Did it work?

Phil0124 wrote:

Doing one now. And it seems to be working.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/82497177-e484-4981-b400-9cc72a65ba3c

Have you ever used one of those backups to restore it to the existing iPhone or to a new iPhone?

steve626 wrote:

Phil0124 wrote:

Doing one now. And it seems to be working.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/82497177-e484-4981-b400-9cc72a65ba3c

Have you ever used one of those backups to restore it to the existing iPhone or to a new iPhone?

In the past yes, never had issues with it. Have not had the need to restore my iPhone from Tahoe though. YMMV

Doing one now. And it seems to be working.