Having the same issue here as well on a MacBook Pro 13" 2.4GHz (2010-model) running 10.6.4 and the latest iTunes. I have an iPhone 3G 16GB. Initially, I waited an hour, then canceled and restarted the phone and my Mac. Now I'm about 1.5 hours into the process and the "backing up iPhone" dialog is less than 10% full and hasn't moved in about 30 minutes.
Having the same issue here on a MacBook Pro 13" 2.4GHz (2010-model) with 10.6.4 and latest iTunes. I have an iPhone 3G 16GB.
Initially, I waited an hour, then canceled and restarted the phone and my Mac. Now I'm 1.5 hours into the process and the "backing up iPhone" dialog is less than 10% full and hasn't moved in about 30 minutes.
The download took 37 minutes [ADSL2 Broadband] stopped the backup based on the lack of activity the process was reporting and the comments in this forum. I think that it might be prudent to wait until satisfactory outcome is reported.
3G 16gb here - same thing. I too canceled, thinking it was taking way too long. On my second attempt after restart of computer and iPhone...been chuggin along for 45min with no noticeable change in status (although at the file level things are changin). Odd.
Checking Out Chris Mercer's suggestion (page 1) shows me two things. My phone is incredibly slowly getting backed up byte for byte to my hard drive. And when I clicked stop earlier on tonight because I thought it had borked up, I stopped after it had already got further than it has now got. If that makes sense?
So now, to bed. I shall hope to return to a fresh shiny iPhone in the morning.
Have the 16gig 3G with 7.5 gig on the phone updating OS4 on a IMac with Itunes 9.2. Download took about 20min & like others I am stuck on the backup! Been 2 1/2 hours and show only about 10% backed up!
I started my update around 3:00 pm. I think we are now almost there. Backup took over an hour. (I already posted that I got a message at the beginning saying it would take an hour or more.) It has updated firmware, activated phone, and is now restoring from backup. Waiting to see what happens next. Now it says settings have been restored and is restarting. May actually have reached the finish line. Not exactly - restoring applications. I have 10 pgs of apps. This may take a while. Bar sits, bar moves, etc. Half way there. Still waiting for apps to be restored. Ok, restoring apps is complete. Now restoring music and videos. I'm going to stop the progress report for now. Guess it's going to go through every piece and restore before it's really finished. I'm at 1 hr 15 min. And still going - but it's going. So, as others have said - be patient - it will actually happen.
I am also experiencing a slow backup upgrading to iOS4. I have an 8GB 3G with 7GB used so not a lot of data. Mind you I am using an older laptop and the CPU is pinned at 100%. Don't know what it could be doing during a backup to take that much CPU power. Looking in the
C:\Documents and Settings\darkwingZ24\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
I do see the size of the folder is increasing at a rate of maybe 1MB/min! It's creating little 1k MDINFO and 1-15k MDDATA files.
I didn't have this much trouble upgrading to iOS 3.0! Grrrr. I was more worried about the slow download times, but the download was fast! This is just ridiculous.
Comforting to see lots of other people in the same boat. I am at 90 minutes now and counting. I will wait because people are reporting successful conclusions. I wonder if anyone will be able to tell us what is going on. It would be nice to know. Patience everybody....
Ahaa! I suggest a little patience as mine was crawling along on backup, barely moving, the suddenly jumped from 10% to getting on with iPhone software and firmware business.
Not long to go now and soon my life will be completely different and improved beyond measure.
Yes! it's restarting now...and....my god...it's full of stars.....
Very slow. First it had to back up. Then it restarted and had to sync. iTunes appeared to have stalled, according to Activity Monitor, but the progress bar on the phone moved, albeit slowly. Then it restarted again, and synced apps. Then it restarted again and is now backing up. Again. This is seriously wonky behavior Apple. Now the screen does show a sync in progress on the iPhone. This backup is taking less time than the first three. Then it has to optimize all the photos (in my case about 700) and sync them back to the iPhone. It sucked up about 200% of the CPUs doing that. Still doing that. Fingers tapping on table while waiting. Arggh. I have other things to do. Not better, maybe, but other.
yay! finally done. It took about 1 1/2 hours I think, I didn't time it. But being patient definitely helped. I stopped surfing for a while to let the iPhone and iTunes have all the CPU, and quit other apps. Probably a good practice if you have lots of data on your phone.
3GS, 16Gb, MacBook Pro Core Duo.
After looking into the folder you suggested, I discovered something interesting: I had previously backed up the iPhone before running the upgrade, so there is a backup from earlier in the day. 271 MB folder.
After 2+ hours I see that I am at 264 MB with the upgrade backup.
Unless the backup process is also backup up files elsewhere, this points to a major flaw in the updater as there is no way it should take this long for 271 MB to get backed up. And other users I have spoken with said it took them 10 minutes to do the upgrade.
I even recently did a Restore on the iPhone last week due to overall sluggish performance throughout.
I recall the last iPhone update was painfully slow as well. Wondering if it has to do with certain setups, like MobileMe users, or Time Machine users, or external hard drives, etc.
I downloaded the update before installing, so it's not a matter of getting bottlenecked at Apple's end.
