iPad Backup Syncing taking Forever!

[baanestad]

Same here.

I wish I could just uninstall iTunes and never EVER have to use it again - it is far and away the worst piece of software I have on my PC.

I couldn't agree more. iTunes is very, VERY bad.

On the other hand, this solution sounds very good indeed. Since I am stuck at the (supposedly) and of my (yet another attempt to) backup, I'll (try to) let it finish this time (if it doesn't take another 18 HOURS...) - and then I will definitely take the time to go through this tutorial.

This is my very first time here, btw, so... "Hi y'all".
Thanks for sharing! :ipad-front:

 

[baanestad]

Really?

Well...I can confirm it now. I deleted Zinio, Huff Post, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair and NY Times Editor Choice. My backup time went from...(I don't know what really. It was two hours and 1/3 completed when I cancelled it) to less than 30 minutes. I highly recommend JonB's advice... The only thing I can add is that you might have trouble finding the location of the backup files. If you do, just do a search on *.mdinfo files and it will help lead the way.

Zinio?! Really? Oh bugger... I have many magazines subscriptions there!
How do you know which apps are the 'offensive' ones?
Thanks!

 

[USBill]

The iPad cable is different. The "head" is twice the size of the iPod touch/iPhone cable.

When I stopped using my iPod touch cable all my synch problems went away without removing ANY content.

 

[baanestad]

The iPad cable is different. The "head" is twice the size of the iPod touch/iPhone cable.

When I stopped using my iPod touch cable all my synch problems went away without removing ANY content.

What do you mean? My cables are exactly identical... The iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, if I hadn't marked them, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The only difference actually, is the power plug - that is big. Im using the right cable and it didn't help.

 

[Protegeone]

Everyone...since I upgraded to the new Operating System..4.2..my backup issues disappeared. My back takes about 5 minutes. I have 131 apps. I wasn't aware that there still was an issue.

Fully agree. Since upgrading to v4.2 problem simply vanished. Full backup takes max. 4-5minutes.

I would say this has nothing to do with cables as I am using the ancient cable which came with my 2nd gen Nano and no problems at all.

 

[USBill]

The Apple connector end of my synch cable is twice as "tall" as the ones that came with my iPod touch and Nano. I when I switched to that cable, the synch issues stopped.

 

[PNS]

Hi.
I have restricted profile space allowed on my set by IT admin, is there a way i can change the directory that iTunes syns, IE move it out of My documents and directly to my C drive?

 

[jutudey]

Hi.
I have restricted profile space allowed on my set by IT admin, is there a way i can change the directory that iTunes syns, IE move it out of My documents and directly to my C drive?

I have a similar problem. I am syncing an iPhone 4, an iPad and my wife's iPhone 3G on the same laptop with limited space on the C partition. My other partitions are huge, so I would love to be able to redirect the backups to those partitions. I tried to reinstall itunes on a different partition, but the backup still goes to C.

 

[gjw46]

I pad sync solved

I am convinced it was a bad app or file. I finally solved this by doing a complete restore, back to my last backup date.

I can now do my backups in minutes

All the various newspaper and magazine apps are big offenders here, and I tunes is not the best to work with these in backups.

Other things that sped this up was using the usb port in the back of the pc not the front.

Thanks everyone for their help

 

[JonB]

iPad Backups..update

Hi all..Im glad that my post from some time back was useful in troubleshooting the backup taking forever issue. As I stated recently, since I update to the new IOS..there is no issue any longer. The backup takes about 3 min for 16 gb of data. This improved backup time comes with my still using offensive apps (backup-wise) like Zinio, NYTimes, WSJ that were all saving cached files

If you are still having an issue, I suggest this: go to the ipad backup directory on your PC/Mac and delete ALL of the 1000's of files there. Then connect your ipad to your PC/Mac and start a backup.

I personally don't think this is about cables...to test this out..connect your iPad to itunes and copy many many music files over and monitor the time required for this.

Let me know what plays out..JonB

 

[Fifimachin]

Why can you only download music or books from one computer?

 

[ahovis]

You think you guys have a problem! I left mine running for 14 hours and it has still not finished! When I went and looked at the backup files there are thousands of them spread out over the past 14 hours so something is being backed up. I am trying to update to 4.2.1 but it wants to do a backup first. What is the risk if I skip the backup part? I have a complete sync just no full backup. What will I loose?

 

[pluto6]

You think you guys have a problem! I left mine running for 14 hours and it has still not finished! When I went and looked at the backup files there are thousands of them spread out over the past 14 hours so something is being backed up. I am trying to update to 4.2.1 but it wants to do a backup first. What is the risk if I skip the backup part? I have a complete sync just no full backup. What will I loose?

You should not lose anything. The first part of the synch is a backup. Unless you are cancelling (stopping) the backup part of the synch.

 

[JonB]

Backup

Cancel it...nothing bad will happen. Get yourself 4.2 and hopefully you will be past this mess.

 

[Diane B]

When my Google calendar app from Readdle had issues with multiple events (i cleaned up everything but couldn't get rid of multiple US holidays) in last upgrade this week I contacted the developer. That lead to uninstall from Ipad, reboot, uninstall from Itunes, rebuy/install and sync. I could not stop the backup (i thought in the pset I just clicked on the x at right to stop it on PC) so cancelled the sync. The last time I backed up for install of 4.2.1 I finally had to delete all my news apps, Zinio and similar to get a reasonably timed backup (I was getting 14-18 hurw and still ot backed up). I just didn't want to do that today so after cancelling I just tried a reinstall via Ipad and got a correct install without multiple events,

A little OT but know how frustrating those long backups are and I don't want to have to delete and reinstall a bunch of apps every time. What a pain. Is it the app developers at blame or the Ipad??

Diane