Change the location where iTunes backups are stored

iTunes annoyingly stores backups on the main system drive (c:\); the backups can get quite large but there seems to be no way within iTunes to set the backup location explicitly.

Scott Hanselman details the steps necessary to create a NTFS junction point to redirect the backup directory to a another drive using mklink but the mklink command only worked when I renamed the /Backup directory in my C:\Users\{user name}\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync directory to /BackupOld. Prior to the rename, mklink would fail with a “Cannot create a file when that file already exists” error.

The mklink command I used was:

mklink /J "C:\Users\Michael\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup" "D:\Backup\iTunes"