Why, Why, Why does backup and restore take so long?

Some good news, some bad news. After around 15 hours, the backup completed. I ejected the iPad from iTunes and it shows that battery at 100%! So despite the "Not Charging" indicator, the iPad must be charging but not at full rate. (Thank you, Apple.)

I will try another backup tonight to see if the problem repeats. I hope it will do a very short "incremental" this time, since it's already taken its sweet time doing the "full" backup. But I could be wrong.

etresoft wrote:

VerticalHeight wrote:
Just to add additional support to the "slow backup" camp, my backups are extremely slow. If I don't backup for several days it will take hours to backup the changes.

If a USB 2.0 transfer of up to 64 GB is taking hours, then maybe you have a hardware problem.

Definitely not. It's a brand new computer I just built a couple of months ago and I can transfer large amounts of data to/from an external western digital passport drive via the same USB port with great performance.

VerticalHeight wrote:
Definitely not. It's a brand new computer I just built a couple of months ago and I can transfer large amounts of data to/from an external western digital passport drive via the same USB port with great performance.

Definitely not? You have 3 devices, one of which you built yourself, two of which are brand new. It sure seems like a hardware incompatibility at least. Apple certainly tests the iPad with Macs. They probably test it with major PC vendors as well. Did they test it with the USB chipset on the machine you built? No way to tell. It would probably be a good idea to take your iPad in to an Apple store and verify that there isn't a hardware problem with it. If your iPad works fine there, you are faced with the same dilemma that anyone has when building their own machine - when something goes wrong, you are on your own.

My iPad, 32 gig Wi-Fi w/3G took about 12 hours for first backup and sync with desktop PC (Compaq Windows XP Pro, 2.08 GHz, 2.0 USB)took about 12 hours! Backing up iPhone on same PC takes 27 minutes.

I have no photos to sync, about 10 app store apps, (mostly finance & stock market stuff)and about 6 gigs of music.

From the same PC my old iPod will sync in five minutes, tops!

So....I have no clue as to what to do. I've always relied upon Apple to produce products that worked without me having to be a techie. I MUST rely on the same with the iPad, and so far everything works just fine, until I try to sync it!

I have contacted Apple support, they walked me through a removal, re-install of iTunes, and trying different USB connections on my PC, but that hasn't helped.
I'll be in contact with them again to continue pursuing a fix, as they have assigned a case #, Will report as developments occur.

I cannot accept someone saying "I'm on my own" with a problem like this.

Allred wrote:
I cannot accept someone saying "I'm on my own" with a problem like this.

But you didn't build your own PC like the other person. Your first troubleshooting step should be the same - try the iPad on a different machine. The ideal machine to try it with is one at the Apple Store. If that fails, then obviously you have a bad iPad and Apple can do something about that right away. If it works fine on another machine then the problem is an incompatibility between your Compaq PC and the iPad. See if there is a firmware or driver update for the Compaq. Since that is a more popular, name-brand machine, it is more likely that Apple will investigate it.

Rick Eames wrote:
Allred, do not listen to etresoft. So far, the only answer from him/her is that it's your problem, the iPad is fine, Apple didn't blow it here, and that obviously the problem is on your end.

Really? Anyone reading this thread can tell that isn't true. I am the only one in this thread who is actually trying to help solve anyone's problems. Do you really want your problem fixed or do you just want collect a bunch of "me too" replies? How does that help?

I have done a clean backup (deleting the old one) and nothing changes -- it's a glacier. Some app/backup incompatibility exists. I suspect ComicZeal4 or GoodReader -- something with a lot of little files that have to get looked at.

Here is a radical idea to try. Delete those two apps and see if the problem persists. If the problem goes away, report your problem to the authors of those apps. If the problem doesn't go away, take your iPad and MacBook Pro into the Apple store and have them look at it.

Here's an update on my backup/sync experience. First all Windows updates were brought current. Security programs, too. Checked diagnostics on PC hardware, all in order.

Started iPad sync/backup at 11:00 am. WooHoo! Success, all backed up and complete....BUT it took over 16 Hours for just over 6 gigs of capacity!!!! During the backup we looked again at PC diagnostics, CPU usage only a fraction of capacity, maybe 10%, memory usage only about half of capacity. So....why 14 hours??? At least my iPad is now usable.

So I attempted a first time sync with a new iPhone 16 gig, 3GS. Same story, glacial speeds. Started at noon yesterday. Looked like about 60% progress on status bar by 5:00 pm (5 hours) This morning, 9:00 am, all apps & data had been successfully synced, about 1 gig worth of data, but NO MUSIC! 6 gigs was not
synced. None, nada. So, more than 21 hours and no music! Could the new 9.1.1.12 version of itunes be the culprit?

SUCCESS! Wow, not sure what I did, but I first time synced 6.3 gigs of audio to a new iPhone in 20 minutes! That's the speed I've seen before. Same PC, same iPhone that last night wouldn't sync music in over 16 hours!

The ONLY thing I did different was, while watching the latest sync attempt stall and VERY slowly proceed for about an hour and a half, in disgust and defeat I clicked on the small "X" in the progress bar window. Immeadiatly there was a change in the display, and the apps started syncing with visibly rapid progress, and then wonder of wonders....the music started to sync/load for the first time. About one song every second! In twenty minutes all was done and the sync program ended. I think the new version of iTunes was hung up on something, and clicking the "X" somehow got it moving.

Anyone got ideas about this? For now I'm happy, but not sure I can repeat synch!

I'm no technie, but it sounds like the back-up/sync was "hung-up" on a single file, and by clicking the red X, you essentially by-passed that file and continued on with the rest. Too bad you can't see what file that was......

etresoft, i realize you're trying to be helpful, but your posts are snarky, techie nonsense. This is an iPad -- supposedly, a simple, straightforward device -- we're talking about, not some Windows- or Linux-based machine. If there is no simple solution, most of us won't even bother trying; that's why we bought an Apple product.

For the record, I have same slow back-up issues (64GB/3G; synced with a brand new superfast MBP15).

same problem takes freaking for ever to synch my ipad 3g

I have the same problem with my ipad. If I click on the x during backup, I can get it to sync just fine. When I then hit backup yesterday afternoon, it took about 16 hours and this morning the status bar was full, yet the "Sync in progress" message was still on, so I cancelled again.

I wish iphone/ipad syncing could be as simple as moving files to them with dropbox or goodreader. Apple has made me dread connecting any of my idevices to itunes to update their content...

Transfers using any bus is limited to a max physical bandwidth.

If the device represents itself as a 'drive' then there is certain protocol overhead that takes away from that bandwidth. A drive is a simple protocol and I see about a 20% loss in general.

If a device asserts higher protocol (DRM, similarity checks, accessing the web for update checks, ... ) then the protocol is even greater. So any iTunes transfer is going to be far less than the possible ~80% one can get for a USB drive. Thus... It will be slow.

If it were represented AS a drive then much of this extraneous overhead would be eliminated and plain, simple, easy, intuitive 'Folder Copy' can be used and get as much as the 80% bandwidth.

Short answer... it's slow. More data makes it take longer. Don't try to retain sync with large files over a slow protocol.

why would backup take so long then? All it's supposed to do is copy the files and settings, no?