Error -402653081 when upgrading ipad to iOS5

[susanthehuman]

I'm getting an error upgrading to iOS5 on my iPad 2 that I'm not seeing anywhere on the net and I'm not sure what to do. My iphone upgraded just fine, but my iPad 2 fails halfway through the mandatory upgrade backup with this message:

An error occurred while backing up this iPad (-402653081). Would you like to continue to update this iPad?

Continuing will result in the loss of all contents on this iPad.

Anyone else seen this? It doesn't appear to be a load issue, as I said the iphone upgraded fine, and this happens at the exact same moment in the process each time. The iPad also backs up and syncs just fine when it is not being upgraded.

My iPad is not jailbroken/modified in any unusual way.

 

[mgipe]

Same here. No solution found yet.

 

[susanthehuman]

Still can find nothing on this

Situation hasn't changed. Can't even call apple as I don't have applecare on this at the moment, and there's a 3 day wait to get a pay-per-call appointment. And the forums over at apple keep telling me my account cannot be created, even though I already have an account.

Considering just going ahead and losing everything, though it will be very inconvenient.

Yuck.

 

[alia]

Situation hasn't changed. Can't even call apple as I don't have applecare on this at the moment, and there's a 3 day wait to get a pay-per-call appointment. And the forums over at apple keep telling me my account cannot be created, even though I already have an account.

Considering just going ahead and losing everything, though it will be very inconvenient.

Yuck.

I had a similar error happen when I upgraded to iOS4 on my old iPad - it turned out to be a particular application that kept causing the back-up to crash. In my case, it always crashed at daBlob, which was an EA game I think. So, I deleted the app from my iPad, and I was then able to back up the iPad and complete the upgrade. I can't tell you the exact error though, because it was over a year ago. This sounds like what was happening to me though. You should look to see what it is backing up when it crashes, and maybe you can delete that one application or video or whatever it is.

 

[mgipe]

How can you tell what is being backed pup at any particular moment? I've watched in Finder as a bunch of files with gibberish names are created during the backup, but see nothing which allows me to identify particular apps or data. When the backup fails, all the files created are deleted, so it's hard to examine them after the fact.

 

[susanthehuman]

How I got past this issue

Following the tip from the earlier commenter, I started removing my apps in batches (like the person above, I was unable to tell which app was in process when the backup failed). I managed to remove all non-apple apps from the device - and all apple apps that had not been in the device on delivery - and the backup still failed with the above error.

Then I power cycled it - I had done this at the beginning of the problem, with no success, but when I power cycled it after all the app removals guess what, it worked.

Sadly, by that point I had pretty much wiped everything anyway by removing the apps, so I'm basically starting over. Such is life. But at least it works, and the features are nifty.