Backup of iPhone takes around 2 hours!

Yes, I agree! It take far too long!!! well over 2 hours for me too. I thought there was something wrong with my iphone 3g!

+1 on backup problems. I'll admit that I was feeling a but smug about this as I didn't have the problem on my 1G iPhone - until I upgraded to 2.0.1, and my backups now hang at the halfway mark.

It is possible that the problem got introduced by one of my apps, as I added a couple around that time. I'm going to delete some and see if it impacts the backup problem, and report back.

Interesting discussion. My first synch of my new (3 days) iPhone 3G took under half an hour. Since then a typical synch takes a minute or two. I'm running 2.02, which was offered to me as an update the first time I connected by wifi.

I do not have a lot of data on the phone yet, just calendar and contact info and some music from iTunes. Maybe the long backup times are the fault of 3rd party applications rather than Apple.

Go into iTunes Edit/Preferences the last tab sync disable auto sync for all iPod and iPhones. This does not fix it it is just the first step do not stop here.

Next connect your iPhone to the computer. Once it shows up in iTunes go into the last tab Applications. Uncheck sync all apps. Now Click apply. Now click sync. it will remove all the applications! After it is finished unplug the iPhone. I bet you will have at least one app still on the Iphone, maybe more. Hold any icon down until they jiggle. tap the x's and delete all the remaing apps. You may notice after you delete each app that a little spinning circle is next to your 3G icon on the top right hand side. Let it finish spinning before you delete the next app.

Once you have deleted all the remaining apps (That had corrupt data that was causing your long back ups!) do a hard reset. To do this hold the sleep/wake button and the home button until the red slider appears at the top of the screen. Slide it over and the phone will power off. You will again notice the spinning circle. Once it finishes wait a few seconds and power the iPhone back on by pressing the sleep/wake button.

While it is booting back up go into iTunes again turn the auto sync back on! Now connect the iPhone to the computer, let it backup and sync. Now it goes so fast you may want to cry or laugh. Now after it finishes go back to the applications tab. Click sync apps again, but make sure you have the 2nd circle checked. This box is sync selected apps. Make sure all the boxes are unchecked! Now slowly begin adding apps back to the iPhone. I have done as many as 5 at a time. Check the boxes then click apply, then sync. It will backup then add the applications and sync all other information. After the sync you may notice that little spinning circle is next to your 3G icon on the top right hand side. Let it finish spinning before you add the next app.

Here is the kicker! DO NOT update or install apps from the phone! Only use iTunes to install and or update apps until they get the bug fixed!

docking wrote:
Go into iTunes Edit/Preferences the last tab sync disable auto sync for all iPod and iPhones. This does not fix it it is just the first step do not stop here.

Next connect your iPhone to the computer. Once it shows up in iTunes go into the last tab Applications. Uncheck sync all apps. Now Click apply. Now click sync. it will remove all the applications! After it is finished unplug the iPhone. I bet you will have at least one app still on the Iphone, maybe more. Hold any icon down until they jiggle. tap the x's and delete all the remaing apps. You may notice after you delete each app that a little spinning circle is next to your 3G icon on the top right hand side. Let it finish spinning before you delete the next app.

Once you have deleted all the remaining apps (That had corrupt data that was causing your long back ups!) do a hard reset. To do this hold the sleep/wake button and the home button until the red slider appears at the top of the screen. Slide it over and the phone will power off. You will again notice the spinning circle. Once it finishes wait a few seconds and power the iPhone back on by pressing the sleep/wake button.

While it is booting back up go into iTunes again turn the auto sync back on! Now connect the iPhone to the computer, let it backup and sync. Now it goes so fast you may want to cry or laugh. Now after it finishes go back to the applications tab. Click sync apps again, but make sure you have the 2nd circle checked. This box is sync selected apps. Make sure all the boxes are unchecked! Now slowly begin adding apps back to the iPhone. I have done as many as 5 at a time. Check the boxes then click apply, then sync. It will backup then add the applications and sync all other information. After the sync you may notice that little spinning circle is next to your 3G icon on the top right hand side. Let it finish spinning before you add the next app.

Here is the kicker! DO NOT update or install apps from the phone! Only use iTunes to install and or update apps until they get the bug fixed!

To be clear, any data that you had stored in your third-party applications will be gone if you use this method. (Can someone who has tried it confirm it?) While this method might have been great for everyone the first two weeks after the launch of the App Store (and it might still be great for a lot of users right now), it's not something that's a solution for many of us.

I'm waiting for Apple to come up with something, and I'll keep complaining, along with everyone else who refuses to delete every third-party application from his/her iPhone, until Apple comes up with a "workable" solution...and by workable, I mean one that involves no action on my part - the way it should be.

Thanks, however, for posting this solution. Certainly, it's an option for many people who have not stored any data in their third-party apps, and at least someone is offering a possible solution, since Apple is basically missing in action on this one, and has released two "bugfix" updates (2.0.1 and 2.0.1) that haven done little or nothing to address this issue.

For everyone having this issue: It seems every single iPhone with Apps installed has this issue.

2 hours? Mine is 4 hours... and I tried a 'restore' from this 4 hour backup just to test it and it stated it was corrupt. Try clicking on your button to restore from a 2, 4, 6, or 8 hour precious backup. Chances are it's corrupt.

This guy proves it takes 8 hours:
http://gizmodo.com/5041731/8%252B-hour-iphone-sync-timelapse-video-aka-be-thankf ul-for-your-short-two-hour-sync

Amazingly long... this is a serious issue. Backups take this long AND they are corrupt?!

I'm trying to update my iPhone 3G from firmware 2.0.1 to 2.0.2. A backup is REQUIRED. I started the firmware update process at about 1am, which immediately starts a backup first. It's stuck at about 80% complete at noon (11 hours later).

Admittedly I have a lot of apps on the phone, but using the Apps feature of the phone kills it as a useable device from a backup standpoint.

Oh yeah, my last backup from a week ago is "corrupt" according iTunes....

Noiseboy2006 wrote:
Just type "defaults write com.apple.itunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool YES" in terminal.

Any word on a similar fix for PCs?

This is a major pain for me at work, I'm constantly leaving my desk for meetings or troubleshooting problems, so I might only be at my desk for 45 minutes to an hour. So it might take me 4 tries during the day to get a valid sync done.

Ideally it would be nice if the backup worked, but I'd really like a checkbox to say "Sync contacts, etc. but don't backup". I know I can just cancel the backup and the sync could still work, but that stinks.

This is just as bad as the MS ActiveSync backup for my Nino from about 10 years ago. Hard to believe that Apple can't do better.

Apple! This is absolutely madness. It takes about 3 hours to do a backup and I have only used 6 Gb on my iphone out of 16 Gb. That means if my iphone is full it might take about 9-10 hours to backup. Anyway, after I have done my backup/sync for 3 hours, my contact in my iphone still has not sync with my contact address book from my mac. So frustrating!!!

Hope someone can come up with a good solution soon!

So some quick feedback from Docker's posting above..

I did the procedure to turn off sync'ing for apps, delete manually any remaining apps and reinstalling the apps.. My first backup took about 20 mins but after the first backup, my backups have gone to 5 mins on a 3G 16Gig iphone with 14 gig of space used...

Thanks ColoradoMan. I followed Docker's procedure and now the backup is only a hour instead of 2 hours i.e. when I do my first backup/sync. After much playing around with contacts, photos and apps 2nd syncing without taking my cables off from the computer and iPhone it only takes couple of seconds to sync.

It is a better. Thanks you.

binnie1 wrote:
Thanks ColoradoMan. I followed Docker's procedure and now the backup is only a hour instead of 2 hours i.e. when I do my first backup/sync. After much playing around with contacts, photos and apps 2nd syncing without taking my cables off from the computer and iPhone it only takes couple of seconds to sync.

This is normal behavior. If you do not disconnect the iPhone, the next sync, after you have already run a backup/sync, does not do a backup, so it only takes a few seconds to run through the sync. Disconnect the iPhone, use it a little, and reconnect and sync again. The backup will run again this time.

This bug JUST started for me, and I have 2.0.2 firmware.

However, I DID receive a phone call during the SYNC operation.

Now it just seems to hang there in iTunes trying to backup the iPhone.

It may be unrelated, but I had recent added a LOT of new apps, and I had a few crashes DURING the installation of a few apps. After rebooting the installation continued, and these apps SEEM to run OK.

Let's hope the newest firmware (tomorrow?) does the trick...

Stephen

Haven't read every reply so this might have already been said.

I got lightning fast backup (well compared to one hour) and all i did was:

1- delete all browser cache/history/cookies
2- delete text conversations that are over several pages*
3- delete recent call log*

hopefully this works with you too...
*optional but will take longer to backup if not cleared.

Message was edited by: CnDnMax