BACKUP in itunes is too slow

I was initially sceptical of geauxracerx's solution, but I was really tired of the hour+ backups, and was willing to try it just to see if it worked. After all, I've only had the phone a week, not much to lose yet, right?

Bottom line - it works. Really. With the same 32 apps installed, now my total sync time including backup is 2 minutes and 10 seconds.

The only problem, that's not noted in the instructions, is that the first backups after reinstalling the apps, which you should do a few at a time, are really long - not hours, but 10's of minutes, which can add up. But the second backup after the long ones are really fast, and stay that way. Of course, whenever you add an app, you're first backup is going to be a bit longer, but after that, it's quite speedy again.

P.S. I just installed 2.0.2 while typing this, and after a hard reset, my total sync time is up to 2 minutes 20 seconds. Rats.

Yes anytime you add new apps songs movies pictures the back up takes a little longer, but in no way are they so long you want to break things.

Glad you tried it.

It's nice to have a huge chunk of your life back huh.

After the update is a real god idead to take all the apps off and put them back on.
Really!

geauxracerx wrote:
It's also been suggested to keep the number of apps you install to a minimum. They recommend you install and uninstall for what you will use that day. The reason being that all apps and their data are stored on a 500meg partition. IF you average app is say 20 megs with data and you have 20 apps that's 400 megs of shared memory. Shared memory is extremely slow. It causes a workstation with gigs of ram to lagg th ink about what it will do to a hand held.

With official apps from the App Store, is this true regarding the location where the apps are installed (system partition)? I know it was true before with third-party apps installed on jailbroken phones, but is it true now with the official App Store apps?

Geauxracerx's approach works. And I definitely had a few stragler apps that I'd purchases via the iPhone App Store, rather than iTunes. And they just wouldn't transfer. I had to delete them on the iPhone and redownload them in iTunes.

Now the sync's happen at a decent pace.

Moral of the story seems to be to use iTunes for getting your apps!

Does geauxracerx's solution keep backups of application data?

For the record, I just upgraded to 2.02 and backup is much faster now. My backup was taking about 2 hours (didn't time it exactly), and now it takes 3 minutes.

This solved my issue!!!!!!!! THANK YOU! Finally no more hour long backups.... literally takes 30seconds to a minutes now... so happy.

bdinmstig wrote:
Does geauxracerx's solution keep backups of application data?

No. I lost my stuff, which wasn't much considering I'd only had the thing for a week. Didn't take long to replace. All the standard stuff - photos, contacts, calendars, etc, were still there. I'm not sure if keeping the old backup in that middle step would have made a difference.

Arghh! Just pressed the sync button this evening - last night I got the 2-3 minute backups - this evening it appears frozen or moving imperceptibly at 20 minutes plus. So much for this method. Didn't add anything to my phone today. Hopefully this is a one-time occurence.

Yes, it was a one-time thing - maybe I changed a setting or something. Subsequent backups (I did 2 to be sure) were 2 minutes 15 seconds long - that's the whole sync process, from pressing the sync button till when the progress bars disappear.

I hope this works. My iPhone takes hours to do this. Even removing the apps is taking forever. Is there a list of bad apps? Maybe they can be identified.

you uninstalled apps how could you expect to keep apps data.

It's not an issue of bad apps. It's an issue of apps getting corrupt during the install over the phone. If you use iTunes to install and update the apps you will not get the corrupt data. That corrupt data causes iTunes to lock up when doing a back up. Like it knows something is wrong and it's not comfortable proceeding, but can't stop, because the back up is so important for you to be able to restore your phone if you have any issues. Like a lot of Apples procedures it tries to be ready for or prevent an issue, and causes one in it's "Stick to the directed path" outloook.

Thanks for the workaround It worked great. Hope apple fixes this though.

I'm trying the "solution" we'll see if it works for me too!

You are very welcome. I am glad you took the leap of faith. I know it was scary, but well worth it. If you see threads where people are trying to get a solution to this issue drop a link back to here and tell them to look for my screen name, and the bold text.

There are issues going around, but most have solutions. Scary looking as they may be. If any one needs direct help search my screen name ok YouTube and drop me a message. I will do my best to help.