Backing Up iphone?!!??! every time i connect?

This is directly off of Apple's website ( http://www.apple.com/iphone/tips/):

"Once iPhone has been configured to sync with a particular computer, iTunes automatically makes a backup of iPhone on that computer when you sync. iTunes won’t automatically back up an iPhone that is not configured to sync with that computer. If you have configured iPhone to automatically sync with iTunes on a specific computer, iTunes will back up iPhone every time you connect it to that computer. Automatic syncing is turned on by default. iTunes only makes one backup each time you connect, even if you sync multiple times before disconnecting."

I would HIGHLY recommend canceling the backup as it serves no purpose whatsoever.

I'm just starting my fifth restore in 24 hours - twice I have tried to restore from backups and BOTH times I ended up with a dead iPhone. The two times I set everything up all over again (as a new iPhone) it worked great (until I tried installing another app by syncing with iTunes, at which time it crashed and the whole restore process started over) ...

Good luck. You're going to need it.

Same Issue

I am on my fourth crash

Day 1 - iPhone Worked Fine (apart from taking a long time to sync and backup which I put down to all the Apps I installed. I tried all the free ones and spent another AU$50 on SMB, CMR, iBeer etc).
Oh and a couple of Apps crashed requiring a restart of the phone each time because the crash affected other apps

Day 2 - iPhone alarm woke me up and I went to work.
Took the phone from my pocket at about 10am to see the Apple Logo
Phone would not switch off so finally held down both buttons
Arrived home to find I had driven 10KM past my daughter who wanted picking up, but couldn't reach me since my phone had crashed.
Connected to iMac OSX 10.4 and froze iTunes
Put phone into recovery mode and started from scratch (took Hours to download the restore package and nearly as long to install it).
iPhone Crashed while I was exploring the apps (happened to be one of the free ones)

Restoring This time was not quite so painfully slow since I already had the download and I then restored from backup and retired to bed (at 4am - I need my phone to work)

Day 3 - iPhone behaved for a few hours and I explored the apps which I had already, tried then adjusted my system settings back to how they were at the end of day 1 and connected to iTunes and successfully backed up.
iTunes then proceeded to start the 3 hour process of syncing and I need to use the phone before that, plus I want to download 2.0 for my Touch (already paid for and almost fully downloaded once over dialup when I paused the download to attend to the phone issues (Apps can't be unchecked when downloads are occurring)) So I clicked the little x and cancelled the sync which bricked the iPhone again.

We are now up to the present moment (some weekend I'm having) and I am about to initiate my 4th recovery then restore from the backup I created an hour ago.

(this might even be my fifth crash since I remember zintin or Zenbe Lists hard crashing the phone as well)

Wish me luck!

The iPhone is still syncing (sounds like sinking)
iTunes is just showing the barber pole constantly and the iPhone is showing the Apple Logo and nothing else.
Should I pull the plug, or wait.

I can't change the auto sync when connected option which sets it off into a never ending sync because of all the checked apps.

I'm going to quit itunes, restore then start again as a new iPhone rather than from today's backup.

iTunes wouldn't quit twice despite asking was I sure and continuing to remain relatively responsive (no rainbow wheel)

Clicking the x did nothing but start off the beach ball

60 seconds and still spinning

Force Quit iTunes

iPhone still shows the white Apple, if syncing it shouldn't be bricked lets try a restart of the iPhone

No response to unplugging the usb cable, no response to holding down power button, screen is dull and yellow in appearance.
Holding down home and power for 6 seconds and iPhone restarts to black (no longer yellow) screen with apple logo, continue to hold both buttons for a further 6 seconds for full power off

Start up by pressing power and Black screen with Apple logo appears and the phone finally deigns to start after several minutes.

We're rolling.

If I experience anything but success in the next 48 hours you'll be the first to hear.

I said I would keep you posted.

iPhone behaved all day Monday, until 6:15pm when I showed someone the flashing torch app and it crashed to the white apple. Unusually after about 4 or 5 minutes it came back to life, but then proceeded to say 'your sim sent a text message' 'cancel' 'ok'
It repeated this two more times and I clicked ok, but no messages were in my outbox.
I have seen this behaviour a couple of times before, but only when my Optus sim is in the phone

After this I arrived home and connected (iPhone is now set to sync manually)
Sync took 3 hours after which all of my downloaded apps appeared for the first time (only 60% to 70% have shown up in the past)
iPhone behaved for the rest of the evening and I proceeded to explore the Apps some more.
I experienced a couple of soft crashes (returned to the home screen) and restarted the phone each time.

At about 10:30pm after one of these soft crashes I turned off the iphone and it could not be turned back on. (I powered off completely and after a couple of minutes powered up and then waited a good 15 minutes before concliding this)

I connected to the iMac and the phone with the white apple on my iphone screen and it was not picked up although I seem to recall LightRoom offering to download my images
In fact, I think LightRoom offered to do this again when the phone was powered down a moment later while still connecetd?

Anyway, I restored overnight and woke to find half my apps are no longer there.
This means that the iPhone Does not modify the backup after the sync
So I have initiated another manual sync and the apps are copying over as we speak.

I don't really want syncing to take longer but it would make sense to record these changes, so I will sync again in the hope that it records those app changes in the backup

Anyway, that's where we stand at the moment

Sync of the remaining apps finished about 4 hours ago so I made one small change on the iphone (added 'juice' in the shopping list application) and initiated another sync so that the newly loaded apps are part of the backup on disc

Well after 4 hours 'Backing Up "Doug's iPhone"...' is about 60% along
I am about to go out for the afternoon, it sure would be nice if I could take my new phone with me.

I haven't even put any music on here yet.
According to iTunes my iPhone contains;

Capacity 7.08 GB

Audio 21.1 MB
Photos 187 MB
Other 698.8 MB
Free 6.19 GB

This isn't right. 1GB over USB 2 should take minutes, not hours

Message was edited by: Doug Young

ok, this is directly related to the apps...I deleted all of my apps and the backup took 3 seconds...

Also,

@Brian:

That doesn't seem to hold true, because I disable autosyncing and it still backs up...

Thanks for that Shaun, it was to be my very next step.

Since returning home at 6:30 pm today (15th) the phone completed its second sync and I have used the iPhone for 15 minutes
Shozu or Sodasnap crashed, after which some apps worked and some didn't.

So, I powered off and immediately restarted experiencing the 'White Apple of Death'

After 5 minutes of this I powered down again and experienced the 'Death Apple' again for 10 minutes before forcing a shutdown.

I connected to my iMac and LightRoom could read the photos with the 'Death Apple' on screen, but itunes was frozen.

iTunes immediately recovered on disconnection of the phone.

Recovery mode here we come. (followed by setup as a new phone, delete apps from iMac and download selected apps again direct on the phone).

PS Apologies to Fonnas for hijacking the thread. I hope my posts have been useful to someone.

No prob...But it isn't really a solution if you want apps...Although it shows it isn't a hardware issue...someone actually told me to bring it back to the genius bar...

The more you add the longer it gets...I erased all apps and my backup is 3seconds...before it was 2hours...If you add apps one by one and each time unplug and plug back in and sync it will back up again getting longer and longer with each app...
It is really messed up because all the apps combined are a very small amount of memory, yet it takes forever...Something is obviously screwed up!

I've restored the phone and synced, which now takes seconds

Thankfully It was easy to delete all the Apps
Just select all and delete within iTunes

Interesting that the Apps aren't packages. I would almost be willing to bet that the iPhone converts them to Packages similar to Applications under OSX and this might be where the slow backups come from.

I can stand a few minutes for backup, so I will download those apps I like and have already paid for
(at least the part of the device that saves me paying twice is working)

One more hard crash today after the BMI App dumped me to the home screen and then a few minutes later while starting CroMag the iPhone crashed to the white Apple

I had just pressed the home button while Cromag was still starting.

Fortunately the phone returned after a few minutes and I have synced, added 3.5 GB of music and Synced again.

I now have only about 50 Apps, most of which I want to keep or trial further.
This is down from 115 apps

The 'other' part of my iPhone is now 594.6 MB and Backup is only taking about 2 hours, sync only is quicker.

I know I can cancel backups, but I have already restored the iPhone phone more than 5 times since Friday and at least the backups keep me partially able to pick up where I left off.

Is backup slow because developers are not keeping their settings separate from the App and therefore the entire package has to be backed up?

Please can we have more control over backup. For instance, I don't care if high scores for MonkeyBall or any other game are backed up, but I do care about shopping lists and todo items

Backup over wifi while powered would be good too, since I have a charging dock by my bed and have been using my iPod touch as an alarm.
That way syncing can occur when I don't need the phone.
Usually I have to leave my iPhone syncing overnight since I often go out in the evenings, but I can't hear the alarm from a different room unless I move my iMac into the bedroom!

Somebody please tell me this is important and is being worked on?

I am pretty sure the long backup is a bug and will hopefully be patched soon...The app store/itunes just isn't the way it should be, with such small apps, it should take a few minutes topps even with 100's of apps...

same problem,
how come with timemachine and the great new airport drive, you still need to connect the iphone to your mac for backups anyway. + it looks like ALL my 8 gigs of music and video's get backed up every time ( takes over 10minutes), even after i decide to only change a mail account, and plugin to sync. how dumb is that?

+ i was thinking: since iphone can only hold music or video content that is stored in itunes. why would you need to save more than a list of songs and videos that need to be copied back to the iphone in case of emergency + ofcourse backup content that was downloaded with the iphone. in my case this should minimise backing up time to roughly .5 seconds, because i only wrote one text mail
this last bit is actually a real problem.
it seems that mails i write from my pop account don't get syced back to the xmail on my mac. anybody know how to solve this?