The Idiots Guide to Making your Iphone Backup fast

[Lightbrazer]

I've seen many posts about backups taking no time at all, and some saying they are taking a long time. I know why some are fast and some are not, it's a setting you chose when you first set up your iphone which does not normally pop up again. Here is my step by step guide to undoing what most of you with slow backups did and making your backups take about 90 seconds on average.

That's right, the actual backup only takes 90 seconds (if you haven't installed anything new since your last sync), the thing that's making everyone's backup take an hour plus is that your sending your crash reports to apple everytime you backup and apples servers are so inundated that you're having to wait for the crash reports to upload and it's taking forever. This is an option that you clicked on your very first sync that you will now undo.

Plug your iphone in so it shows up under "devices" on the left side of itunes. If it starts to sync stop it right away by clicking the x (top middle of itunes). Then go to devices click your iphone so the middle window displays the iphone info and uncheck the "automatically sync when this iphone is connected" you'll find it under the summary tab of your iphone if you're not already there.

Then unplug and re-plug your phone back in.

Now when the phone shows up under devices right click on it and a context menu will pop up, go to the bottom of this list and select "reset warnings"

Now click sync and a warning window will pop up which you probably flew by the first time you set up your phone. It is the source of your backup woes. It is the one saying apple would like to get your crash reports. Also it will have checked by default "don't show this warning again" which is why you never got a chance to undo your mistake of clicking yes last time.

UNCHECK the don't show this again, you want to see this warning window everytime you plug your phone in because you'll always want to click "DO NOT ALLOW." If you want to see why the backup takes so long then click the button where it says to show you the reports. I'll bet if your backups are taking a while this folder is just chock full of crash reports. Go ahead and empty it.

Now everytime you plug your phone in just keep selecting DO NOT SEND THE INFO TO APPLE. (please note the window will only show up if there are crash reports to be sent, so if you empty the crash report folder above then you won't see the warning window again until a new report is generated) I'll bet your backups go way faster from now on.

Also note, if you have a butload of new apps that you installed on your last sync the next backup will indeed take several minutes since this is all new data. (Remember itunes does a backup first then an install incase any of the new apps cause a major problem you'll have a backup from before you installed them. But this means the next time you plug your phone in is the first time your backup will include any apps from the last sync). For example if you sync now and you get a 90 second backup but then you install Brain Challenge (an almost 100 meg app) the your next backup will probably go up to 5 or 10 minutes since none of this is in the last backup. But that's still a far cry less than what many of you have been experiencing.

And when no new apps are installed the backup takes about 90 seconds now.

enjoy.

[yoman]

Thanks...I'll give it a try...

[TonyMil]

Thank you!

[cfairbank]

Do you know how to do this on the mac. Can't right click the device. So where do you go to change the setting?

Thanks

[Lightbrazer]

Originally Posted by cfairbank

Do you know how to do this on the mac. Can't right click the device. So where do you go to change the setting?

Thanks

If you don't have a right mouse button on your mac mouse then hold the control button down when clicking to bring up the context menu. Please note control+click will act as a right mouse click universally for your mac incase you didn't know that.

[Sobe]

Great tip!

Thanks a bunch!

[dacreativeguy]

doesn't work on the mac with itunes 7.7. That dialog never appears.

[HawaiiMacAddict]

Aloha Lightbrazer,

I attempted to follow your instructions, but the crash report window never came up for me. I'm resigned to just let iTunes do the backup once a day, as I've been sitting here for the past 1:36 (1 hour and 36 minutes) - I pulled the plug on the backup as I have to go out and wash my car now. I'll complete the backup later today.

HawaiiMacAddict

[joebokeh]

Originally Posted by dacreativeguy

doesn't work on the mac with itunes 7.7. That dialog never appears.

i got the same result

[firewood]

The dialog appeared the first time I tried this. But not the second time I tried to sync.

[maryanny]

I have a mac and 7.7 and it worked for me, thanks so much!

[joebokeh]

whatda.. how...

[skubish]

doesn't work on Macs

[acvball92]

didn't work for me either. I hope they fix this soon. It is sooooooooo anoyyyyyinnggg.

[Nikhil72]

The dialogue popped up on my MacBook...I'm letting the initial backup go through now (always hit cancel...), I'll report back on subsequent ones!

[nikhsub1]

I successfully did everything explained... however the backup is still taking forever...

[thor79]

nice...worked great here...had 10 or so crash reports in the folder.

[Sky Blue]

It's a nice tip, however I don't want to be clicking 'don't send' everytime. I'll keep it as is.

[Xtal]

Tip: if you sync using MS Exchange or MobileMe, your backup problems will go away. I sync to www.nuevasync.com using MS Exchange and I have never been asked to back up.

The backup problem comes from syncing bookmarks/contacts/calendar/email to your LOCAL COMPUTER.

As soon as I decided to sync bookmarks to my local computer via iTunes, it would back up my iPhone each time there was a change on the computer which had to be transferred to the iPhone. I turned off bookmark sync and I was back to NEVER being prompted to back up.

[Lightbrazer]

First it does work on macs, in fact I only have a mac to have tested it on.

Second as I said in the initial post once you empty the folder storing the crash reports then you won't be prompted again until more crashes occur and something goes in that folder.

This won't magically make the backups go away, it reduces them to their actual time of 90 seconds to 5 minutes and eliminates the 2 hour plus backups many users were experiencing.

[HawaiiMacAddict]

Aloha Lightbrazer,

I attempted this on my iMac (bought in 2006, Core Duo 20" model) running Mac OS X 10.5.4 and iTunes 7.7. I'm using a virgin (non-jailbroken) iPhone 3G running Firmware 2.0 (5A357). As I mentioned before, my attempt was unsuccessful, so I'm just going to close out of the backup for my morning sync (when I load up on my daily podcasts) and do a "full" sync every evening.

My iTunes library is actually hosted on my external drive, so I'll make another attempt using my MacBook Pro later tonight and let you know the results of same.

In your last post, you mentioned emptying the folder storing the crash reports. Is that folder emptied when you right-click and choose "Reset Warnings"? I get that far, but never get the error reporting window after clicking the Sync button.

HawaiiMacAddict

[aphexii]

Originally Posted by Xtal

Tip: if you sync using MS Exchange or MobileMe, your backup problems will go away. I sync to www.nuevasync.com using MS Exchange and I have never been asked to back up.

The backup problem comes from syncing bookmarks/contacts/calendar/email to your LOCAL COMPUTER.

As soon as I decided to sync bookmarks to my local computer via iTunes, it would back up my iPhone each time there was a change on the computer which had to be transferred to the iPhone. I turned off bookmark sync and I was back to NEVER being prompted to back up.

You're incorrect. I use Mobile Me push for all my data and my backup took about 55 minutes yesterday.

[lavrishevo]

Have you tried making sure all your app's are listed in iTunes that are installed on your phone. I had about 15 apps's not showing up in iTunes because I was downloading and installing via wifi on the phone. One I downloaded all the 'missing' app's via iTunes my sync's greatly improved in speed. Worth a shot.

[ViViDboarder]

Originally Posted by lavrishevo

Have you tried making sure all your app's are listed in iTunes that are installed on your phone. I had about 15 apps's not showing up in iTunes because I was downloading and installing via wifi on the phone. One I downloaded all the 'missing' app's via iTunes my sync's greatly improved in speed. Worth a shot.

Yea, this dialog does not come up on a mac and so I doubt it could have much a reason. A crash log is just a small text file. MUCH smaller than 1 meg even if you crash multiple times.

I already had a post documenting this (As quoted user mentions)

[Sonicjay]

Turning off the reporting stops giving information to Apple that they could be using to fix the problems..