as i am writing this, my iPod touch has been connected for the past HOUR and it still isnt done doing a backup. It hasnt gotten to syncing it yet. Backups should only take a few seconds right?
I have only a few short videos on there. Otherwise its just apps and music. But still, should it take and hour to sync it? even if iTunes is a little slow, it shouldnt take THAT long right?
Yeah thats what i thought. I have cancelled the sync before and it seemed to go only marginally faster. But yeah i cant wait to finally own a macbook pro in a few months...
Is there another thing to try? I transferred all of my photos to my PC, and deleted them from my 3GS. No photos or videos on my camera roll. I'm impatient, so after 2 1/2 hours of backing up (2.34 gb of 29.33 capacity) I simply disconnect. Most of the forums list removing photos and videos to improve backup. There must be some fix.
Are you running other programs together with iTunes at the same time? This is especially the case for Windows. I get that problem when I'm running certain games while at the same time running iTunes for syncing. I solve this problem by simply doing whatever syncing I needed to do FIRST before anything else.
The first backup is a full backup of the device, and may take quite a while (but not hours and hours). After that, it does incremental backups, backing up only things that have changed, and that should take only a few minutes, unless you've just added gigabytes of video, etc.
If this is not the first backup and you have not added gobs of new content since the last one, it should not take that long. You probably have a corrupted backup file. The solution: delete the backup from iTunes, then sync the device. Since this is considered a "first" backup, it'll be a full one and will take a while, but after that, you should be back to normal.
Not sure why this happens, but occasionally it does. I've had to do it three times in the past year.