I have an iPhone 7 running iOS 12 and an Intel MacBook Air running Big Sur.
The iPhone has been unusable for a long time. By that I mean the messages or phone app may not load or will crash on opening. Tapping anything may take a minute to respond. Just opening settings may take a few minutes. Then scrolling within Settings will take a minute. Just putting the phone to sleep may take a minute. It's now missing phone calls and texts.
Also, I have never been able to get photos/videos off of it (see this saga: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/image-capture-not-seeing-photos-on-iphone.2144651/)
So I want to try once again (I have tried and failed at this before) to back it up to get everything off of it and erase it.
The problem is that it is completely full (I have offloaded every app I can, but the rest is full with photos and health data I don't want to delete), and the MacBook Air is only 128 GB.
That's where the external drive comes in.
I have been using this guide:
Unfortunately, this guide assumes you already have a local backup.
You then create a symbolic link from that local backup to a folder you create on the the external drive.
In my case, there is nothing under MobileSync since I have never been able to back up before.
Things I have tried:
Creating a folder under MobileSync called "Back Up" and creating a symbolic link to it from the external drive's folder.
This failed because when I started the backup a new folder was created under MobileSync with a long name.
I tried then symbolically linking that new folder (which obviously couldn't continue backing up an had nothing it at the time I canceled--there was no actual workable cancel option so I had to force quit the process from Activity Monitor). That resulted in a folder being created inside that folder or maybe in another folder that was symbolically linked for some reason. I was doing this on no sleep and stressed and I forget the exact outcome.
I then tried symbolically linking the entire MobileSync folder, and at this point, again you'll have to forgive me, I forgot what happened exactly because I was doing it on no sleep and stressed. But I just remember something about a nestled folder being symbolically linked instead.
In short, is there a way to do this if you have never created a local back up before? How should I modify the instructions in that article?
The iPhone has been unusable for a long time. By that I mean the messages or phone app may not load or will crash on opening. Tapping anything may take a minute to respond. Just opening settings may take a few minutes. Then scrolling within Settings will take a minute. Just putting the phone to sleep may take a minute. It's now missing phone calls and texts.
Also, I have never been able to get photos/videos off of it (see this saga: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/image-capture-not-seeing-photos-on-iphone.2144651/)
So I want to try once again (I have tried and failed at this before) to back it up to get everything off of it and erase it.
The problem is that it is completely full (I have offloaded every app I can, but the rest is full with photos and health data I don't want to delete), and the MacBook Air is only 128 GB.
That's where the external drive comes in.
I have been using this guide:
Unfortunately, this guide assumes you already have a local backup.
You then create a symbolic link from that local backup to a folder you create on the the external drive.
In my case, there is nothing under MobileSync since I have never been able to back up before.
Things I have tried:
Creating a folder under MobileSync called "Back Up" and creating a symbolic link to it from the external drive's folder.
This failed because when I started the backup a new folder was created under MobileSync with a long name.
I tried then symbolically linking that new folder (which obviously couldn't continue backing up an had nothing it at the time I canceled--there was no actual workable cancel option so I had to force quit the process from Activity Monitor). That resulted in a folder being created inside that folder or maybe in another folder that was symbolically linked for some reason. I was doing this on no sleep and stressed and I forget the exact outcome.
I then tried symbolically linking the entire MobileSync folder, and at this point, again you'll have to forgive me, I forgot what happened exactly because I was doing it on no sleep and stressed. But I just remember something about a nestled folder being symbolically linked instead.
In short, is there a way to do this if you have never created a local back up before? How should I modify the instructions in that article?
