Backing Up Iphone Takes Forever?

[blairh]

Hey Guys,

My Iphone 3G takes a great deal of time to "back up" when I sync it to my MBP. I'd say around 45 minutes or so. I don't have much on my Iphone (8 GB's of music, 500 photos, seven pages of apps (in regards to the Iphone screen), and a few podcasts). I don't think it has anything to do with my media and instead something either needs to be adjusted in settings or perhaps something else. I'm running 3.0. I have "automatically sync when this iphone is connected" checked off along with "manually manage music and videos". My friend who also has a 3G Iphone says his sync takes two minutes.

What could be wrong?

Edit: Did some research. Turns out I can just hit "x" when backup begins and it jumps to syncing. It is safe to always "X" out the backup when I sync my Iphone? What am I risking, if anything, by doing so?

 

[kate-willbury]

obviously pressing X will cancel the backup. duh.

 

[jmann]

Is there a specific part of the backup that it stalls at? Just it just say "Backing up iPhone" the whole time?

 

[blairh]

Not really sure what you mean by a "specific part". It doesn't necessarily stall. It just goes extremely slowly while backing up my Iphone during sync. I've read online this is a common issue and can be due to corrupt apps downloaded directly from itunes on the iphone, etc. To avoid this going forward I'm going to just hit "x" when backup begins.

 

[eastercat]

To avoid this going forward I'm going to just hit "x" when backup begins.

As long as you're not the type who adds/deletes names in your contacts; adds/deletes/modifies notes; or has anything that you consider valuable, then you can skip the process.
However, if you do add new names or have a lot of notes, you're going to be in a world of hurt if you have to restore your iPhone data.

 

[Knowlege Bomb]

The main reason I back up as frequently as I do is because I maintain all of my financial accounts on my phone with Checkbook. A few of those accounts are changing daily so it would be a major issue for me to lose that data.

Also, backups contain your text message history, app settings, icon arrangement, etc...

 

[jarjarblinks]

I had this issue previously.

Looking at my Activity Monitor, the disk activity shows the "Data Written" (RED) to be fluctuating wildly.

Check if yours has the same syndrome while backing up.

I trouble shooted a few possibilities and I realized that it was due to my USB hub and using of an old iPod Video USB Cable rather than the stock iPhone 3G cable provided.

Apple Care also mentioned to me the possibility my pins in the dock connector port are damaged hence data transfer speeds are reduced dramatically.

 

[blairh]

All my contacts info is stored in my address book. If I ever had to restore my Iphone I can easily get all my info back just by syncing with my address book in the future.

 

[gr8tfly]

If you use AppSniper, make sure to tell it to:

preferences > Config > clear icon cache

 

[iFerd]

^^ Yes, this is very important advice. AppSnipper was just updated, but I don't think this has been fixed. Not 100% sure, but I don't think so.

 

[icewing]

Do some more research, there were LOTS of problems with long backup times on earlier releases.

As I recall, the way to fix it was to delete all your backups off the laptop, then do a clean backup, let it complete, don't press the X. After that backups go very quickly.

Good luck!

 

[blairh]

How do you delete all your backups off your laptop?

 

[icewing]

In iTunes, go to Preferences, click on the Devices tab. You'll see a list of backups. Click on each to select, press the Delete button.

Also, in iTunes, click on the iPhone, there's a flag there in the middle of the page that says "Automatically sync when iPhone is connected". You may want to turn that off until you get this sorted out ( I leave mine off ).

Then, perform a sync. The first one will take a long time, as I recall even the second one might, but after that they're typically pretty quick.

I just did a sync, it took just under 2 1/2 minutes, I've got 5.8 gig of songs, 3.8 gig of videos, 1.3 gig of apps, 600 contacts...

Then I did another sync and it took almost exactly 1 minute - looks like it skipped the backup part that time.

What OS version are you running? Are you running the latest version of iTunes? (I'm current on both, 3.0.1 on iPhone). I did this "delete the backups" thing last year sometime and have been running fine ever since.

Good luck!