The Idiots Guide to Making your Iphone Backup fast

[Waron]

Works For Me!

Thanks Lightsaber,

Using an early 2009 MacBook. Syncs went from 20 minutes to less than 1 minute.

Ironically if my iphone didn't crash so often, this problem wouldn't have happened either.

Come on apple! My old powerbook and ipods crashed much less than my newer, more expensive gear!

 

[The General]

Thanks Lightsaber,

Using an early 2009 MacBook. Syncs went from 20 minutes to less than 1 minute.

Ironically if my iphone didn't crash so often, this problem wouldn't have happened either.

Come on apple! My old powerbook and ipods crashed much less than my newer, more expensive gear!

This thread is incredibly old. The bug causing slow backups in 2.x firmware with iTunes 8 was fixed and has been gone for almost a year.

The reason your backup went from 20 minutes to less than one minute is because backups are incremental. Since you didn't change many if any files on your iPhone between the two backups you did following this guide, the second backup didn't have to backup anything at all, hence its speed.

 

[xxdayrex]

Wtf...

You know,
You just paid god knows how much on an iphone, and they cant even provide it with software that acctually works.

 

[warrior4777]

Idk???

Ok, I believe I have the winning slowest back-up! It's been going on for almost 2 days noe and it's not even half way done. Yes, you read that right, 48 straight hours - I started it midday on friday and it is Sunday morning and it's still going!

I can't be without my fhone anylonger, but I haven't been able to back-up for a long while now because of the slowness.

I've followed the suggestions posted here and nothing different. I haven't done a complete re-lode of everything, i'm trying not to because I do have a lot of data contained in quite a few different apps.

I have the iPhone 3G with 3.1.2 (not jailbroken) the latest iTunes,windows 7.

Any help would be awesome!!!

Thanks in advance.

 

[-aggie-]

Ok, I believe I have the winning slowest back-up! It's been going on for almost 2 days noe and it's not even half way done. Yes, you read that right, 48 straight hours - I started it midday on friday and it is Sunday morning and it's still going!

I can't be without my fhone anylonger, but I haven't been able to back-up for a long while now because of the slowness.

I've followed the suggestions posted here and nothing different. I haven't done a complete re-lode of everything, i'm trying not to because I do have a lot of data contained in quite a few different apps.

I have the iPhone 3G with 3.1.2 (not jailbroken) the latest iTunes,windows 7.

Any help would be awesome!!!

Thanks in advance.

Depends on whether you can wait, but I'd let it finish, unless it's too excruciating. Then, you need to restore this phone as new. If you sync everything from the iPhone onto the appropriate software (like Outlook or Address Book for contacts) the restoring as new shouldn't be much of a pain at all.

 

[kingadjon]

Thanks!

Very helpful and definitely sped things up.

---
Dell Latitude X1
1.1 GHz Intel PM
1.24 GB RAM
XP Pro SP3

 

[CuMorrigu]

Update to iOS 4.0

Okay trying this again.

Pre-troubleshooting steps, backup was still running after SEVEN HOURS. Windows machine installed updates and re-booted so I lost all progress that was made.

Windows 7 64bit
4gb RAM
iTunes 9.2 (just ran the update this morning).

Begin troubleshooting:
Deleted all old backups backups
Reset all warnings
Reset sync information
Deleted all error logs
Told Apple to feck off and I'm no gonna send them me 'usage information.'
Backup is STILL taking forever. I'm at about 1 hour right now with no visible progress on the status bar.

 

[Kin Lau]

Okay trying this again.

Pre-troubleshooting steps, backup was still running after SEVEN HOURS. Windows machine installed updates and re-booted so I lost all progress that was made.

Windows 7 64bit
4gb RAM
iTunes 9.2 (just ran the update this morning).

Begin troubleshooting:
Deleted all old backups backups
Reset all warnings
Reset sync information
Deleted all error logs
Told Apple to feck off and I'm no gonna send them me 'usage information.'
Backup is STILL taking forever. I'm at about 1 hour right now with no visible progress on the status bar.

I'm in the same boat as you, I've just updated to iTunes 9.2, Vista 64bit, 4gb ram, removed the old backup, rebooted everything. I let it run for several hours a few times, but cancelled it because I thought it was hung.

This time, I'm checking the \Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\...... folder, and I can see files are being created, but _slowly_. I know I have about 7gigs of apps and data on my phone, but after 1hr, the backup folder is only 19.3mb.

 

[Acronym]

when deleting the folder did you delete the baseband and the panics folder?

 

[caranddriver]

Wouldn't backup before upgrade happen faster if you unclick all the music, videos, etc. and sync so it takes that stuff all of your phone before the big upgrade?

 

[talepictures]

The thing I don't get is why the normal sync backup works quickly but then when it comes to the update it takes years. No iOS4 for me until iPhone 4 I think...

 

[Kin Lau]

when deleting the folder did you delete the baseband and the panics folder?

No, I did not. I can't find any folders with those names, where are they?

After 9 hrs, my backup is only at 200mb, the progress bar is only showing less than 10%. At this rate, it's going to take about 1 week.

 

[occamsrazor]

I just thought I'd add my experience...

iPhone 3GS, successfully upgraded to IOS4 with no problems.
Subsequently doing a "sync" would take forever.
iTunes would be stuck at "Syncing My iPhone" for hours, never seeming to end.
I tried most of the tips mentioned including the "reset warnings" one, with no success.

Then I tried disabling the Photos sync. Wow - the whole sync takes something like 20 seconds.
It asked me if I wanted to remove the synced photo albums, I said yes, and it removed them from the iPhone (but still on my mac).
Note: I don't use iTunes to sync my camera roll, only use Image Capture for that.

Re-enabling the Photos sync appears to make the process grind to a halt again unfortunately. I find this rather crazy, I am talking about one single folder of 60 images, I can't see why this would make a MBP get stuck at 100% CPU for hours.

Anyway, this solved the sync problem for me, now I just need to find a way to get the photo albums synced back on. Hope this helps someone... the current flakiness of iPhone sync and backup is ridiculously bad.

EDIT: I just did another test....

Sync with Photo-syncing completely disabled - about 20 secs, doesn't max the CPU
Sync with Photo-syncing enabled, syncing only one folder containing one image - maxes CPU, doesn't appear to finish.
There's clearly something messed up with the photo-syncing....

 

[occamsrazor]

OK, I've had some success.... As per these articles:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1314
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11732723&tstart=0

I discovered there is a photo cache created in the top/root folder of whatever folder you have chosen to sync photos from on your Mac.

Find this folder named "Ipod Photo Cache" and move the whole thing to the trash.
Open up iTunes, select the iPhone device, go to the Photos tab, then select which photo folders you want to sync (when I did it the Photo sync tab prefs had got reset).
When you hit sync, you should see the progress bar at some point say "optimising photos" or something like that..... and the whole sync process after that should be quick.

 

[*busybeez*]

Thank you so much

!!!!!!!

 

[*busybeez*]

Thank you lightbrazer!!!!!!!!

I finally found a thread that someone actually knew what they were talking about!!! This helped tremendously!!! Now I can backup my phone in seconds. Now the only problem is some of my apps that are in my itunes still are not on my phone. Im going to be searching that too, hopefully I can find the solution!
Thanks again

 

[Blackl4va]

Help meeee! HELP IS APPRECIATED!

I can't find the backup folder for iTunes, can someone please explain to me how to find it? Thank you, and when I left click on Devices>__'s iPhone> and get to the Summary part I scroll all the way down to Options and these are the only options :
- Open iTunes when this phone is connected
- Sync only checked songs and videos
- Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC
- Manually manage music and videos
- Encrypt iPhone backup

But not, ' automatically sync when this iPhone is connected ' . And I'm running then newest version of iTunes ( 9.2 ) Please help me out here ! All help is appreciated

 

[K9connection7]

K9connection7

Can somebody tell me how to get my wife 3GS to get new 4.2. Got a error because she stopped it before done now I just get a error when I go in to itunes

 

[Night Spring]

As far as I am concerned, using iTunes to backup iPhone is fast. Launch iTunes and connect your iPhone to the computer. After the phone being detected, click the backup icon and you can choose to backup your data to iCloud or "This computer".

Um, this thread is five years old! The issues discussed here are no longer relevant -- iTunes and iPhones have evolved since then.

 

[Jstuts5797]

Um, this thread is five years old! The issues discussed here are no longer relevant -- iTunes and iPhones have evolved since then.

Actually I'm having this issue now with both my iPad Air and my iPhone 6+. Ive let my 6+ try to backup onto my computer using iTunes for about 6 hours and it still didn't show any signs of being done anytime within the next 24-48 hours. I haven't backed up my iPhone in ages now because of this. So yea, any help would still be nice.

 

[Night Spring]

Actually I'm having this issue now with both my iPad Air and my iPhone 6+. Ive let my 6+ try to backup onto my computer using iTunes for about 6 hours and it still didn't show any signs of being done anytime within the next 24-48 hours. I haven't backed up my iPhone in ages now because of this. So yea, any help would still be nice.

First, delete any old backups.

Second, restart your computer.

Third, does iCloud backup work?