Saturday, November 12, 2011

Moving iTunes iPhone 3g 3gs 4 4s backup to network drive and off your boot drive

To move your iTunes iPhone backup from your boot drive to a network share (e.g. on your home NAS) you need to do to have the following:

  • Microsoft iSCSI Initiator (comes with Windows 7 and Vista)
  • mklink (comes with Windows 7 and Vista)
  • NAS that has iSCSI services (e.g. QNAP TS-239 Pro II)
  • iTunes with a recent backup of your iPhone
With the tools and software above follow the steps below:

  • Double check that you have an existing backup under 'Edit>Preferences>Devices' in iTunes
  • Close iTunes and unplug your iPhone from the computer
  • Launch into the admin page of your NAS and enable a iSCSI Target Service. You will also need to create a iSCSI Target and a mapped LUN. If you are not comfortable with this you will need to google for instructions on the internet as configuration will vary from model to model.

NOTE: Make sure you make the mapped LUN slightly bigger than your iPhone capacity (e.g. 17gb for a 16gb iPhone, 33Gb for a 32gb iPhone, etc. Make sure to enable Thin Provisioning if your NAS supports it as this will save space on your NAS - P.S. Most good QNAPs do)

  • On the workstation with iTunes, click START and type iSCSI Initiator ('iSCSI Initiator' should appear in the search results). Click on 'iSCSI Initiator'.
  • Click Yes to run this service automatically
  • In the Target field type in the IP address of your NAS that is hosting the iSCSI Target Service and click 'Quick Connect'
  • Your iSCSI service should appear. Click 'Done'
  • Click OK
  • Click START and type Computer Management ('Computer Management' should appear in the search results). Click 'Computer Management'
  • Under Storage click 'Disk Management'
  • If you only have one hard drive, the iSCSI drive should appear as DISK 1. If you have multiple hard drives then the iSCSI drive will most likely be the last one on the list. Click on the iSCSI drive and create a 'Simple Volume' (name the volume and format using NTFS with the quick format feature). Once the drive has formatted it should be accessible through the normal windows explorer. Change the drive letter of this volume to wha ever you want (I choose i:)
  • Locate the folder with your iTunes backup. This will likely be

"C:\Users\User1\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\"

  • Go back to the 'MobileSync' folder and CUT and PASTE the 'Backup' folder to the iSCSI location (e.g. cut the 'Backup' folder from "C:\Users\User1\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync" and paste to i:\). This will take a while to copy.
  • Open a command prompt and type in 'CD\' and press enter. This will bring you to the root if your C: drive. Type in the the following command to make a symbolic link:

C:\>mklink /J "C:\Users\User1\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\"
 "I:\Backup\"

  • If successful you will see the following output:

Junction created for C:\Users\User1\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Ba
ckup\ <<===>> I:\Backup\
  • Now open iTunes and click 'Edit>Preferences>Devices' and you should see your latest backup/s!



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