Installing 4.0: It has taken 1 hr to backup and not done yet?

Tonight, I did the following:

Updated iTunes

3.1.3 was already downloaded, had never bothered installing it, so I updated to 3.1.3, this did a backup and update all done in about 15 minutes.

I then downloaded 4.0

Started update to 4.0 and it started to backup but ever so slowly, so I left it running and went out for TWO HOURS. came back, and its still only done about 5% so I cancelled it.

Tried some slow backup fixes which forced me to have to sync, and backup, which took about 30 minutes to complete the backup probably.

Started the update of 4.0 and still no different, extremely slow doing the backup.

It's backing up at a rate of about 4 files per second (monitoring the backup folder). It's done about 5% (according to the progress bar) in 30 minutes, so it's going to take about 10 hours at this rate.

I started the process again at 0800 it is now 0825 it is reporting 'Restoring iPhone Software' at about 90% completed

same, backed up before the update which took about 20 mins. Now I've been waiting approx 2 hours while it backs up again. It's sitting at about 5%. Whoever told me 'it just works' when it comes to Apple were telling lies.

entering hour 4 of back up and its not moving

I am now approaching 5.5 hours of backup time.
Wondering who will hit the record for the longest backup time.
I only had 1GB of the 16GB being used.
Go figure on the long backup time.

Can I upgrade to iOS4 via someone else's iTunes or am I best to wait until I am back at my own computer in two weeks time?

update on my status:

approx 45 mins ago, i posted that i had finally, after nearly 2.5 hrs, backed up ~324mb from my iPhone 3G 16gb (about 2 gigs free on phone, about 70% of total used is music so i'm assuming NOT really backed up during the process).

after about 11 mins of "restoring backup" after having already gone thru the ~10 minute process of installing the new firmware, it is now on a new thing that says "restoring iPhone applications" and is about 60% of the way thru.

has this happened to anyone else who has been successful, that once thru with the lengthy backup process, you've taken nearly another hour to actually get the phone up and running again?

I started my update at 10:05am PST (6-21-10) today. iTunes downloaded the iOS4 update fine and then my iPhone 3G 16GB went into Sync mode and started to backup. It is now 3:40pm PST and my phone is still backing up.

I even backed up last night as it only took 1 hour. I removed (un-synced) all of the videos, TV shows, Podcasts, etc. just in case it would slow the upgrade. The only thing I didn't remove were the photos. When I check the backup folder it does seem that most of the .mddata files are image files (thumbnails and high res images) everything from my Camera Roll to App thumbnail images that are downloaded when using News Apps and the like. Maybe that has something to do with it?

I don't have any answers but I thought that I should add to the list of unacceptably long and failing upgrade procedures. I sure hope they fix this for future Apple users because it sure doesn't make them look good.

Does anyone know what the difference is if I just do a restore? It backs it up and installs the latest OS. Then I should have the option to restore from the latest backup. Is there anything I am missing?

That's what this article says 3g owners need to do:

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/06/21/ios-4-updating-woes-with-iphone-3g/

I'm restoring now and it seems to be working (fingers crossed). Don't quote me on it, but my home screen now has the IOS 4 "raindrops" wallpaper so I think it's working (as opposed to 3 hours of nothing when I attempted to update as opposed to restore)

Just adding my voice to the sea of discontent.
I have the latest versions of iTunes, iOS, and MacOS installed on my 8-core Mac Pro. I'm also 2 hours into the "Backing up iPhone".... process on my iPhone 3G and <10% done. There is more than just transferring files from my iPhone to my Mac, it must be running a conversion algorithm on something. My CPUs are barely breathing so this conversion process is not very efficient. We have all come to expect better from Apple.
Will my iPhone 3G upgrade to iOS4 before I get my new iPhone 4 later this week? The race is on.

*UPDATE 1*: At 2:09 into the "Backing up iPhone".... process, it finally concluded. I'm now onto the next step, whatever that is. I'll update final progress.

Message was edited by: WhiteEagle27513

Thanks for the confirmation dagdagdag123. I already started the backup and its almost done. Much better than the 30 minutes with no progress using the update. I'll post when I am done and let everyone know how it went. 🙂

3.25 hours backup so far and counting the progress bar's not even reached 50% - what a joke!

Six hours and counting. Over 9200 files so far (totaling about 450MB) and most are 1-7 kbytes in size.