How to Restore backup from external drive to itunes or iphone in Windows 8? I back my iPhone up to My Windows 8. Since I don't have much space on my C: Drive, I moved my iTunes backup folder to an external drive (mklink/J "%APPDATA%\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup" "J:\Backup"), and then created a symlink from the normal backup folder to the location on the external drive where that particular backup folder is located.

Now, there are two problems I've noticed with this. Firstly, when I connect my device and look in iTunes, it says "Latest Backup: Your iPhone has never been backed up to this computer" – even though it has been backed up (although to an external drive). The worse part is that the "Restore Backup..." button is grayed out, not allowing me to restore my iPhone from the backup.

Another thing I should mention is that when I go to iTunes > Preferences > Devices, I don't see my iPhone backup in the list. 

So, how do I restore my iPhone from my backup external drive in my windows 8.. Please help
iTunes doesn't work with symlinks very well. Try to copy the backup of your device back to "~\MobileSync\Backup" folder. Your backup is a folder in "Backup" folder with 40 random chars in name (device UDID).

After copying the backup, restart iTunes. It should now see the backup and allow you to restore it.