How to back up your iPhone & iPad directly to a NAS

Last updated on 12 Jan 2023 📧 Subscribe

How to back up your iPhone & iPad directly to a NAS

Synology, Backing up IOS (iphone, ipad) devices directly

I have bought a couple of NAS systems from you in the past while you where at Span. I would like to donate / & buy you a coffee etc.. if you can share your pearls of wisdom.

At the moment iOS devices can only be backed up with itunes , to a Mac OS machine or PC, Then you have to back up the Mac/Os or device using Apple Time Machine onto Synology or QNAP Nas. This is double work, & iOS devices take up a lot of space on The Mac OS machine disk.

We are desperately searching for a way to be able to back up iOS devices directly to Synology or QNAP NAS. So there are a few 3rd party supposed solutions to enable you to back up iOS devices directly to a external disk/NAS.

Which ones work -in terms of back & restore? What is the best way of backing up iOS devices to NAS etc?

I am sure it would make an interesting video & I know several people who are facing this issue. (iOS / mobile devices are getting bigger & bigger in terms of storage). iPad is still the best tablet out there.

Yes, if you want to use a full backup of your phone or iPad, you would need to connect it to your PC or MAC. But if you have Plus series Synology or Celeron based Qnap then you will be able to create a Windows Virtual machine that can be used for the backups of your mobile device (avoiding double job connecting to a computer). (!!UPDATED – Virtual machine in DSM7 will not find USB any more)

The other option is to use Synology Photos or Qnap Qmaggie app. This will backup all your heavy multimedia files and free up space on your mobile devices. You can then run a backup of your devices now with much smaller storage space needed.

Cheapest Synology and Qnap for Windows Virtual machines will be DS220+ and TS-251D.

 

I hope this helps.

 

 



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2 thoughts on “How to back up your iPhone & iPad directly to a NAS”

  1. Hello, I’ve tried to follow your advice, but I understand (from Synology directly) that Synology NAS such as DS220+ does not support connecting phones to the NAS via USB, because the phone is a USB host and the NAS does not support this. So it doesn’t appear possible to connect an iPhone to a DS220+ and back it up directly using a Windows Virtual Machine as you suggest.

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