Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPhone backing up at every sync

I've noticed on mine that a large backup only occurs after a crash on my iPhone, as if it's actually submitting a report instead of just backing up. On the old firmware, iTunes always asked if I wanted to submit, now it does it automatically.

Granted, according to the logs, it's crashing once a day, but it does seem to correlate when I get a long backup or not.

Just a thought.
 
elistan said:
Here's what I did last night:

1) Connect iPhone to computer.
2) In iTunes, under Preferences, remove the existing iPhone backup, and delete sync history.
3) Sync iPhone. a) It made a backup. b) It told me some purchased items on the phone weren't in iTunes, which was true, so I said to transfer them over. c) It made another backup. d) And finally completed a normal sync.
4) In the meantime I downloaded some iPhone formatted wallpaper and deleted a couple free apps I didn't want anymore, so a few minutes later I did another sync. This one took a little while, but did NOT start with a backup.
5) Later on in the evening, I decided to do one last sync to see what's up - no backup, and very quick since there wasn't any data changes.
Click to expand...

Heh. Now add and app and watch the BIG back up occur. I bet you a dollar it does.
 
My problem is a bit different. The backing up portion goes relatively quickly (I only have one app. other than default stuff installed) but the syncing of my contacts and calendars takes *forever*. I'm a pretty patient guy but when I say forever I mean *hours*. Very frustrating. Also, I haven't been able to actually complete a sync because my phone rings at all hours of the day/night and when it does, the the sync gets canceled.
 
I see a big sync, even if I have full backed up and synced just a minute ago. Same painful process.
 
plumbingandtech said:
Heh. Now add and app and watch the BIG back up occur. I bet you a dollar it does.
Click to expand...

Yeah, here's what I plan on when I get home this evening:

1) Connect and sync.
2) Add a new free app.
3) Sync again - I expect a backup. Apple seems worried that new apps could corrupt the phone.
4) Sync yet again, and observe if it still backs up.

Based on some error messages I occasionally get (things about errors transfering apps to the iPhone when it already had those apps) I think the real source of the issue is that iTunes is trying to copy over apps every sync even if those apps are already on the phone. It simply happens that an app sync triggers a backup, which sucks for us. Which means, Apple needs to fix the app sync code, and the backup-during-sync portion is working as intended.

I hope that deleting the old backup and resetting my sync history cleared up whatever issues iTunes had with syncing apps, and after a single backup for a new app, will just do normal non-backup syncs thereafter.
 
Tonights update:

1) Connected iPhone and synced. Started a backup. Bummer.
2) Canceled that and let sync complete as normal.
3) Did two more syncs - no backups! Yay!
4) Downloaded Pandora Radio.
5) Did yet two more syncs - again, no backups. Hmm. Weird.

Oh well, not sure what to think because of that backup during the very first sync. But it's promising that the next for syncs went w/o backup. I'll continue keeping an eye on it...
 
When I sync'd my wife's phone this AM the backup took 10 secs. The sync itself took about a min (2 podcasts were added). fast sync :D

I'll keep testing.
 
I have the same problem with the backups taking an absurdly long time to complete. Whenever I add a new application, the backup takes too long. For example, my iPhone syncs were taking a reasonable amount of time. Then, I added a new application through iTunes and re-sync'd, which created a backup that had to be cancelled since it took too long. Also, the backup that was created did not sync applications added on my iPhone to my iTunes Applications list. Others have noted this as well in this forum. I expect that Apple will release a small update soon to address these initial problems...let's hope!
 
skinnylegs said:
My problem is a bit different. The backing up portion goes relatively quickly (I only have one app. other than default stuff installed) but the syncing of my contacts and calendars takes *forever*. I'm a pretty patient guy but when I say forever I mean *hours*. Very frustrating. Also, I haven't been able to actually complete a sync because my phone rings at all hours of the day/night and when it does, the the sync gets canceled.
Click to expand...

Since it takes 2 hours for my phone to sync these days, I normally put it on "airplane mode" to avoid a cancel 1.5 hours into the damn thing
 
Warning

Quick warning for everyone.
I too have been having HUge backup times (over an hour), even when I haven't added any new apps (just made some settings changes).
I started to cancel the backups when they try and only let the backups run once (over night).
Then yesterday....
My 3G Crashed (big time), the reboot tricks would not work, just ended up with the apple logo and wouldn't boot at all.
In the end i had to put the phone into recovery mode and restore my phone, and when it got to the: restore from a backup I thought sweet I have backed it up a dozen times since i got it. But no luck, it said the backup was corrupt (clearly was trying to use my last backup which i had cancelled!!).
So had to do a clean restore, which lost all my settings.
So lost all my saved games, all my setup in my Speed Dial app, all my photo settings in the pairing photo game, all my weight statistics from weight tracker, all my settings of which app on which page. Took me ages to set it all back up.

So if you are going to cancel the Backup, be aware that when you do so, you effectively DELETE ALL BACKUPS, so in the case of a failure (don't seem that rare from what i have experienced/read) you basically end up with a blank device, which is not ideal.
 
Well, that's going to be a problem!

PrinceDraven said:
Quick warning for everyone.
I too have been having HUge backup times (over an hour), even when I haven't added any new apps (just made some settings changes).
I started to cancel the backups when they try and only let the backups run once (over night).
Then yesterday....
My 3G Crashed (big time), the reboot tricks would not work, just ended up with the apple logo and wouldn't boot at all.
In the end i had to put the phone into recovery mode and restore my phone, and when it got to the: restore from a backup I thought sweet I have backed it up a dozen times since i got it. But no luck, it said the backup was corrupt (clearly was trying to use my last backup which i had cancelled!!).
So had to do a clean restore, which lost all my settings.
So lost all my saved games, all my setup in my Speed Dial app, all my photo settings in the pairing photo game, all my weight statistics from weight tracker, all my settings of which app on which page. Took me ages to set it all back up.

So if you are going to cancel the Backup, be aware that when you do so, you effectively DELETE ALL BACKUPS, so in the case of a failure (don't seem that rare from what i have experienced/read) you basically end up with a blank device, which is not ideal.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the warning! The last time I let mine backup, I started the sync at around midnight and went to bed. Woke up at 6:38 and the progress bar was less than halfway across. I left it alone and it was finished a few minutes after 9:00. I think it's ridiculous to take this long, but now I'm afraid to interrupt it, just in case I have to restore. I guess I'll just sync once a day and leave it hooked up all night from now on. I hope Apple corrects this in the next update, as it's a big inconvenience.
 
Wolf103FM said:
I've given up and disabled the backup process until they get it together.
Quit iTunes, go to terminal and paste
Code: 
defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true
to re-enable the backup, just change true to false.
Click to expand...

Or:
Disable automatic syncing in iTunes/edit/preferences/syncing then when you want to sync your iPhone, go into iTunes, go to the iphone/applications tab and change which ever of the radio buttons, "all applications" or "selected applications" is selected to the other one, so that the button at the bottom of the page changes from "sync" to "apply" then when you select "apply" it will perform a normal sync (including music) without performing a backup.
Repeat above everytime you want to sync. If you want to a back up, don't change the radio button selection and click on sync.
 
Idea...

Anyone know the name of the backup file it creates?
Just thinking we could do a full backup then copy the file somewhere.
That way if we cancel a backup and have to restore the phone we could copy the full backup into the correct place.
At least that way (in theory) we would have A backup, it may not be the latest, but may be better than nothing.

Any thoughts?
 
Fenir said:
Most likely in case some app goes haywire, or somehow is a nasty program that bypassed apple testing...kind of like Time Machine...

And it takes a long time im my 4GB, I can't imagine a full 8GB or 16GB
Click to expand...

I think that "bad" apps have something to do with it. I had an app: Astronomer" and it kept crashing even after a restart of my iPhone and it would freeze it also. The backup I tried yesterday took over an hour and finally just froze close to the end of the status bar. I had to force quit iTunes and restarted everything. Later that night I erased Astronomer and a few (3 or 4) other apps that I didnt need and plugged in my iPhone to my MacBook Pro. WOW! it only took a few minutes to sync! I attribute this to the bad app.
 
Let's do a recap:

Most of us have the trouble that once you plug in the iPhone to a PC (or mac:apple:), the phone starts to back up, and it takes way too much time.

Backing up is not the same as syncing. The way it works is that the phone backs up whatever data it's backing up (the $64,000 question for most of us) and then it syncs phones, music, and whatnot.

In my experience, the syncing doesn't take long at all, just the usual when uploading large video or audio files into the iPhone. But I haven't been patient or lucky enough in the past days as to let a back up to complete.

One of the workarounds is to cancel the backing up process; however, if you do this and you actually need to restore your iPhone (for whatever reason), the backup will not work since it never actually completed, so be aware of that.

Some say that the backing up process takes long because if the phone crashes (for me it's daily), it sends a report to Apple once you plug it into your PC. I do think this is right, however, maybe the iPhone sends the whole phone backup to Apple in order for engineers to replicate the problem instead of just a report. This is what I think the reason is for the long "back ups". Just yesterday my phone crashed and today it was taking more than 20 minutes to back up and it wasn't nearly half completed.

I will try erasing the current backup and letting a new backup complete, to see what happens, but so far, no full answer or fix. Sorry :(.
 
Thanks for the recap.

To add:

The new iTunes 7.7.1 does not seem to back up any faster and I am still suffering 1.25 hr backups.
 
How worse can it get??

OK, so my iPhone has the last update...and in the past few days, a complete backup hasn't actually completed...what is happening, is that now third party apps crash when you click on them, ALL of them!!

Right now I'm trying to do a full backup, hopefully this will solve the problem, if not, I'll have to restore the phone :( and reload everything again...any of you experienced the same problems??

EDIT:

Around 8:30 am started backup...It's 9:03 am and the bar is around 25%...10:54 am, 70% of backup, almost faint when the phone rang...11:08 am, unfortunately 'something' happened, and the backup stopped, I'll update to see what good it did...
 
I remove a ton of apps in hope it would go faster and it did the long backup.
I played iKanoid (great game) for a few minutes and plugged it in. 45 minute backup JUST because I played the game for around 3 minutes. :(
I have disabled the 'send to Apple' thing.

I have no idea why a backed up phone would do a 45 min. backup just for 3 minutes of gameplay. Illogical.

Is it an iTunes thing? I'm starting to think so.
 
srry if this question has been asked. but to avoid the long time of transferring purchases. i just got my new imac can i just rebuy beatmaker from the app store on itunes? (i bought it via wifi on from my phone the 1st time) with out being charged again?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back