iPhone Backup takes ages since 2.0

It would, of course, help if the syncing phase worked properly too.

The iPhone support provided by iTunes feels like it's been shoe-horned in as an afterthought, probably because it has. This is a consequence of the way their product development has progressed, but its not satisfactory. They need to undertake a major overhaul of iTunes to make it more iPhone friendly, and less sluggish. I'd guess they're already working on these problems, but thats no consolation for us right now!

Apple is surely going to solve this on the next software update, but in the mean time you can turn off automatic backups. For more details see my blog post at:

http://mike952.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/iphone-backup-taking-too-long-the-fix/

I have the same problem. Very frustrating. Is taking about 35-40 min to sync! Needs to be fixed. Should not have to skip backup, it just needs to do it's backup faster.

Consider yourself lucky. Admittedly, I went a bit crazy with the app store and have about 6 pages of apps. BUT: my backups take HOURS!! I mean, this is ridiculous. I don't even have a full iphone, just 3 gigs of photos. EVERYTIME I backup, even having changed very little it takes over 6 hours!!

2.01 has not brought back-up relief. iPhone 3G and Powerbook 1.5 Ghz take around 45 minutes to backup. Whatever happend to incremental back-ups (only backing up added data)??!

It started backing up at 9am, its now 12:13 and its still backing up.

3 hours...

The phone spends more time backing up than in use as a phone.

Since I sometimes sync daily, I actually timed my 3G iPhone's backup and sync tonight.
The backup took 25 seconds, the sync an additional 30 seconds. And, I didn't lose my ring tones.

It is taking me 3 hours to backup my iPhone 3G.

Really bad. How could it take so long ?

I have about 30 apps installed, but apps are small compared to video and music which do not take that long to load on your iPhone or backup.

I finally turned off the backing up step using the "Secrets" app. Now syncing is quick. But the downside is I have no backup. Not good.

There is a serious software bug here.

3 hours? wow. I thought my 1.5 hours was bad.

It's getting increasingly hard to justify syncing the phone at all.. I simply don't have that amount of time to be sat around waiting for it.

I actually think it's trying to backup the music too - that's the only thing that can account for those kind of delays.. USB isn't that slow and 1.5 hours is about the time it would take to restore my library if I did a restore.

Same problem, so far the only thing that stopped the back up but still ran a sync, is to go into Pref's in itunes - Syncing - and remove the back up. Running without a back-up seems a bit dodgy but what's to loose I only have a few app's and everything else is synced?
Maybe some one can tell me if this is a bad idea, but at the moment it beats the ridiculous back time and I only have at present 1.5 gb on the phone.

The only thing you might lose would be current Settings and SMS messages if you needed those, provided everything else is backed up (purchases in particular).

Personally I'm starting to wonder how much merit there is in having these backups.

No harm in tidying everything up on the phone if you have to.

AC

I must admit, I consider this 'feature' is completely broken for me. I can not get a successful backup. It takes several hours, and the phone always rings when trying which causes the process to start over again. For me this device is first, and foremost, a phone - I am always to be contactable so turning it off for hours to backup is not an option.

Apple - this functionality is broken. I have tried many of the suggested techniques and there is no improvement. Please indicate how serious you are about this major flaw.

2.5 ish hours for me also 16g 3g, 1/2-full. I can't do this anymore. Old iPhone took 3 minutes?

I called AppleCare and the person I spoke with who claimed to be upper tier said he never heard of the problem and wanted me to sync again but set it up as a new phone or something. I did that days ago. I have restored also.

You should upgrade the OS to 2.0.2 that came out yesterday. My backups jumped from a few minutes to over an hour when I upgraded to 2.0.1, but the 2.0.2 OS dropped the Backup time down to 3 minutes again.