How to backup iphone to mac without icloud preferably external hard drive?

Do you know the "rsync over SSH" Method? This method treats your iPhone like a remote Unix server, using the secure copy protocol. It requires a jail broken iPhone.

How to backup iPhone to Mac:

1. On your jail broken iPhone, ensure OpenSSH is running and note its IP address on your local Wi-Fi network.

2. On your Mac, open Terminal.

Use the rsync command (a powerful, built-in Unix tool) to copy the entire /private/var/mobile/ directory (which contains all user data) to a folder on your Mac. A basic command would look like:

bash

rsync -avz -e ssh root@[iphone-ip-address]:/private/var/mobile/ ~/Desktop/iPhone_Backup/

4. This creates a raw, non-encrypted, but complete file-level copy of your user data partition.

It's a geeky, non-Apple method using the Mac's Unix backbone. It's not a restorable backup in the traditional sense, but a forensic disk image. About how to backup iPhone to Mac, for most users, the standard encrypted Finder/iTunes backup is superior, but for your quest into the obscure, these paths are valid and free.