[Wayne]

My new PC has a 60GB SSD as the system drive. In the house we have two iPads and an iPhone - the backups for these devices is using over 8GB or close to 15% of my system drive. The backups are stored in C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\.

Is there any way to have iTunes store these backups on a network drive?

 

[hugh]

I would imagine that changing the default location for My Documents would do the trick. I assume you don't want any documents on your SSD.

 

[Ed7789]

]Changing the Documents location will not change the locations of the iTunes Mobile Backups, as they are not saved there.

It's possible to change the location of the backup by creating a Symbolic Link on that folder, in Unix/Linux world. It would be done using a command similar to

ln -s /Where/I/want/to/put/the/backups/ ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

, after having moved the folder (otherwise, it will remain in place and inaccessible unless you remove the symbolic link.

The same seems to be able to be done under Windows using an NTFS junction. You would need to use the following tool: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768.aspx
After installing (or unzipping) it, you would go in the command prompt, and type the following command (replacing %username% by your real username):

• Windows XP
  

  junction W:\here\you\want\to\backup "C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Apple Computer\Mobile Sync\Backup"

• Windows Vista/7
  

  junction W:\here\you\want\to\backup "C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\"

  Administrator rights may be required to perform this task under Windows Vista/7.

 

[hugh]

Thanks Ed7789 for the good information. It seems that Windows doesn't move the Users AppData and other information when you move the Microsoft method for changing users directory.

Got me googling which found this

iTunes places the backup files in the following places:

Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
Windows Vista and Windows 7: \Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

and this article How to Move your Windows User Profile to another Drive which expands on much of what Ed said.


Learn something new everyday!

 

[753951]

For this purpose, and many more, Windows 7 finally has full support for symbolic links and hard links, in addition to old junctions. Problem is, it's mostly command line driven, and many users are not command line savvy.

There are few GUI add-ons that try to mitigate this shortcoming. By far the best I know of is Hermann Schinagl's Link Shell Extension. It integrates into Windows Explorer and gives you power of pros to manage your links of any kind. Best of all, it's free. Check it out at http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html

I also have SSD and often "relocate" stuff I don't think belongs there with this utility. Like GB of maps Garmin think should be there, etc.

 

[Wayne]

Thanks folks - this looks very useful.

 

[hugh]

Wayne, let us know if you get it working.

As an aside, it's ridiculous that Microsoft does not easily allow you to easily store this type of data in a second drive. As SSD's become more common this will become a greater issue.

FWIW, I avoided an SSD in my new HTPC build as I didn't want to have to deal with these types of issues.

 

[Wayne]

I would also blame Apple as they should give the user the option to specify the backup folder location.

This is one downside to the SSD but the system is very fast (i5-2500K) and very quiet.

I will try this out and post my results.

 

[Wayne]

A bit of a complication - it looks like you can only make a junction to a local drive and I wanted to make the junction to a network drive. That's a bit of a pain.

Here is what it looks like in a command prompt:

C:\Users\Wayne>mklink /J "C:\Users\Wayne\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSy
nc\Backup" "M:\~~Hoylake AppData\MobileSync\Backup"
Local volumes are required to complete the operation.

Here is some documentation on this from:

Notethat Windows does not support junctions to directories on remote shares.

So it looks like I will have to find some other folders to make room on my sys drive. My OS folder (c:\windows) is taking up about 17.5GB. That seems like a bit much, doesn't it. Note that this is Win7Pro x64

 

[grog]

A bit of a complication - it looks like you can only make a junction to a local drive and I wanted to make the junction to a network drive. That's a bit of a pain.

How about creating a VHD on your network drive and mounting it locally? It will appear as a local disk so it should be able to support a junction point.

http://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thela...nt-a-vhd-within-windows-7-server-2008-r2.aspx

So it looks like I will have to find some other folders to make room on my sys drive. My OS folder (c:\windows) is taking up about 17.5GB. That seems like a bit much, doesn't it. Note that this is Win7Pro x64

Seems about right. My work laptop has a relatively recent Win 7 Pro x64 install and I haven't installed a tonne of stuff and my Windows folder is 20.7 GB.