First of all Apple doesn’t tell you to backup your phone you will need double the free space of the device. Then Apple support will tell you they can’t tell you how to change the backup location of the Windows Store iTunes program. This guide is to show the problems I had when trying to set up the mklink and also help people set up the mklink properly.

What is mklink?

mklink is a keyword used to make symbolic-links between directories. Imagine that you wanted to store a directory somewhere and wanted a shortcut to access it from somewhere else. mklink would enable you to achieve this task.

Symbol	Use
/d or /D	Creates a soft symbolic link
/h or /H	Creates a hard symbolic link
/j or /J	Creates a Directory Junction

Mistakes – Correct Method Lower Down

1. Open Command Prompt

Click on the Windows symbol on the screen or press the Windows button on your keyboard to open the start-up menu. Search cmd or Command Prompt. Right-click on it and run it as administrator.

Type the following command at the prompt and press the “Enter” key:

mklink /J “C:\Users\YourWindowsUserName\Apple\MobileSync\Backup” “E:\itunes-backups-2020”

mklink

*Cannot create a link when that folder already exists.
Don’t have a folder where you want the files. This mklink will create the folder and link.

mklink /J “E:\itunes-backups-2020” “C:\Users\glenc\Apple\MobileSync\Backup”

Cannot create a file when that file already exists.

I had to delete the folder on the E drive.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>mklink /J “E:\itunes-backups-2020” “C:\Users\glenc\Apple\MobileSync\Backup”
Junction created for E:\itunes-backups-2020 <<===>> C:\Users\glenc\Apple\MobileSync\Backup

junction is the wrong way around

mklink /J “C:\Users\glenc\Apple\MobileSync\Backup” “E:\itunes-backups”

didnt work

How to set up the mklink properly.

rename C:\Users\glenc\Apple\MobileSync\backup to C:\Users\glenc\Apple\MobileSync\backup2

Click on the Windows symbol on the screen or press the Windows button on your keyboard to open the start-up menu. Search cmd or Command Prompt. Right-click on it and run it as administrator.

Then type in

mklink /J “C:\Users\glenc\Apple\MobileSync\Backup” “E:\itunes-backups”

after that press enter on the keyboard.

The link should have been made correctly.

As the link is complete, you can copy older backup files into the other drive. iTunes will be able to see the files on the other drive now.

My phone was full of data and had a problem

It was stuck on the black screen with white Apple logo mark.

I connected my phone to my Windows computer by cable then pressed volume up, volmome down then pressed the power button until the recovery option came up on the phone.

iTunes realized there was a problem and it said you need to update so I did that but as the phone was full error 14 came up just saying it was too full to do the update and fix everything.

I did the full recovery as it said but now I had iOS 14.2 on my phone and the older backup was from an older version so I couldn’t just do a recovery from there.

Backup First

Audio Files – Sync in iTunes then copy from folder on PC. Find where files are from Properties in iTunes.

Contacts – Make sure there is enough room in iCloud then backup

Photos – Install iCloud drive then copy files from it to your desktop

If you open the file you can check which version you need. For me it was 14.0.2

Download the old iOS file

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/how-to-downgrade-ios,review-6519.html

1. Hold down Shift (PC) or Option (Mac) and click the Restore button.

2. Find the IPSW file that you downloaded earlier, select it and click Open.

https://iosninja.io/download-ios-firmware/14.0.1

They are not signing IPSW files anymore so I tried downloading AnyFix but that program said there aren’t any older supported iOS downgrades available…

Now I need to find a way to downgrade iOS…

How do I get my iOS 14.0.1 backup on my iOS 14.2 phone? from ITunes