How to move iPhone backups from Macbook to external drive?

[giasha]

I have only backed up my iPhone once to this MacBook and it is already taking up 47GB of space. I have googled how to move the backup onto an external hard drive and have seen many posts with similar suggestions, involving typing in coding into Terminal such as:

ln -s /Volumes/<Your External HDD name>/MobileSync/Backup ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup

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

But different websites suggest slightly different codes and as someone who has never edited Terminal or anything, I'm quite worried about doing something wrong. Could someone please walk me through this?

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Go to FInder --> Go menu --> Go to folder... --> Type in "~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup" --> Move whatever you want to your external hard drive --> Delete them through iTunes.

 

[giasha]

Once I have moved the file to my external hard drive is it safe to delete the backup from my computer? (I don't think the Terminal coding worked)

I don't know how to check that it has worked- what will I do if I ever need to restore an iphone to that backup?

 

[Evren Carven]

You'd better move the backup files to the external hard drive manually. Before you delete it, you can move it to trash firstly to check if it is safe. And then you can empty the trash. If you want to restore your iPhone with the backup, you should copy them back to the location and then restore with iTunes.

 

[Melodeath]

If you need to backup again, it will create another 47GB folder if you don't move the original back to where it was.