I jacked with this thing for over 3 hours tonight trying to update my daughter's ipad. No sir, after all the issues I'm having, I refuse to update it now. I keep getting hung at about 1/4 way through the backup phase. I've googled this issue and I know I'm not the only one having issues. I've tried remedies to no avail, now I just give up. It works fine as it is. It's a shame, too. Being an avid Mac owner/user, I'm really disappointed in their mobile devices and the way Apple is handling them. I prefer my Android phone over my old iPhone any day of the week, but LOVE my Mac and Macbook. Really disappointed. I appreciate your letting me rant. Hopefully they will get this fixed and introduce a more effective and reliable way to distribute updates in the future. Until then.....

Maybe you have some conflicting apps on it? I bought an iPad last week, brought it home and loaded some apps, then updated to 4.2 with no problems.

-Mike

When that happened tp my iPhone, it was the cord... How is yours at the ends, is the coating all pulled out ? New cord and iPhone updated like butter.

Thanks for the replies. I am a little less irritated now. I just needed to vent, lol. The cord appears to be fine, but I have others I can try if I decide to attempt it again. I, too, suspect an app or corrupted file....only issue is finding it. Sigh, I'm gonna give it a rest for now but continue my research on it. Maybe at some point, I'll try again. Thanks again for the replies.

Do a sync first, that way it has a backup completed. That is how I did mine and it took all of about 30 minutes, start to finish.

I don't think it's "hanging" at the backup phase, it just takes a really long time. I had a backup take a full 24 hours when I did it. It appeared to be frozen too, but it wasn't really.

It is always a pain to update the os of idevices.
I love idevices but I hate using itunes.
I have been using Creative Zen players for years .it is so easy to transfer music/videos from pc to the player. Just drag and drop.
Now I'm still downloading os 4.2. keep my fingers crossed, there is no time out error or I have to start from square 1.

I remember my iPod can't access to the ios because I updated Cydia. So I had to upgraded to ios 4.2, and then downgrade to ios 4.1, jailbroken again.

The backup process in iTunes is massively inefficient and buggy. I can copy video files of several gigs in a few minutes but a simple backup has taken as much as 12 hours for me. Apple can blame the Apps, but if they cant copy a file because it contains odd characters it is the fault of their flawed "file system" design.

If you have the time just let the process run for a day or so and it will probably finish. But make sure the computer USB is charging the iPad. I've read horror stories of bricked iPads because the update failed to finish when the battery died.

Try to uninstall iTune, and reinstall it. Quite few had ther problems pineda to problem with that.