back up 20 hours and counting

Well actually seems to be a very common problem. i have been on several forums and plenty of evidence that this is a fundamental problem with iTunes. There are third party fixes being written e.g. http://www.digidna.net/products/backoff

That simply turns off backing up the iPad, It does not speed up a backup.
Have you tried reinstalling iTunes?

1) What is your computer operating system - are you on a PC ??
2) How good is the internet connection? What is the download speed - how much data can be downloaded and how fast - also how many other devices are connected to the internet system.
3) I would cancel the process, reset, start again and if you are on PC get rid of it and buy a MAC as I don't know anyone with a MAC who has ever had any of these sorts of problems. Also check your internet connection speed as this does affect the speed of back up, restore & syncing capabilities.

How good is the internet connection?

At this point it doesn't matter as he is only backing up.

buy a MAC as I don't know anyone with a MAC who has ever had any of these sorts of problems.

Haven't looked at all, have you?
I have had this issue. I canceled the sync (in iTunes and on the iPad), unplugged the iPad and started over and it cleared up.

Also check your internet connection speed as this does affect the speed of back up, restore & syncing capabilities.

It does not. Yo do not need an internet connection to back up, restore & syncing capabilities (unless you are Restoring and have not previously downloaded to iPad firmware)

Is the iPad plugged into a high power USB port?
Usually, the USB ports on the back of the computer will have enough juice to run the iPad but not charge it \so there should not be any battery run down.

I feel your pain...really!

At this point, you will probably have to abort the effort.

Have you tried uninstalling itunes? (I had to do this, and it took more than I thought it would...there are apple files WAY beyond itunes that affect an uninstall and reinstall).

When I tried to update, the stripy bar said it would take 48 HOURS, so I canceled. But, many other downloads do take several hours and do go through

mmmmmmmmmm 200 people out of 14.5 million sales, that sure is a BIG problem!!!!!

Just return the iPad and the problem is solved.

As others have said, this cannot be too common a problem, as otherwise, the media would be all over it. Given that, there are only a few places it can be coming from.

Your machine
Your cable
Your install of iTunes
Your iPad

The troubleshooting steps other have suggested - reset everything, uninstall various things, get rid of certain apps - are all designed to rule stuff out.

If you have tried the obvious, take it back to the store and demand a replacement.

I have noted my ipad starting to pause during sync, and many console messages like:


1/29/11 8:53:09 PM iTunes[5805] _AMDServiceConnectionFinalize (thread 0xb0185000): close(50) failed: Bad file descriptor
1/29/11 8:53:20 PM iTunes[5805] _AMDServiceConnectionFinalize (thread 0xb0185000): close(50) failed: Bad file descriptor
1/29/11 8:53:33 PM com.apple.usbmuxd[5764] MuxSendToClient send failed for 0x4-[redacted]@[redacted]->[redacted]-iTunes/com.apple.iTunes:20737: 32 - Broken pipe1/29/11 8:54:15 PM iTunes[5805] sendmessage (thread 0xb0185000): Could not securely send message size 406: SSL ERRORSYSCALL errno (Broken pipe)
1/29/11 8:54:15 PM iTunes[5805] AMDeviceStopSession (thread 0xb0185000): Could not stop session with device: kAMDUndefinedError
1/29/11 8:54:15 PM iTunes[5805] sendmessage (thread 0xb0185000): Could not securely send message size 325: SSL ERRORSSL (error:1409F07F:SSL routines:SSL3 WRITEPENDING:bad write retry)

I am not sure exactly which piece of hardware - the old macbook pro, the cable, or the ipad - that is producing this. Once I get some time to poke about, I suspect a return is in my future too.

Other people's ipads do not seem to fail this way. This is not good.

Scott