iphone 4/ipad backup

How do you know if your phone is legitimately backing up? Or just getting hung up and not actually doing anything?

I have been trying to get this figured out for a while. When I connect either my iphone or my ipad to my computer, it will say "Syncing 'iPhone'/'iPad' (Step 1 of 6) Backing Up". Under the writing the status bar is just the scrolling black and grey bar. I do not know if this is actually backing up or just hung up. I left my ipad "backing up" for three and a bit days before, and nothing happened, so I imagine that the backup was not working.

I have even tried checking the backup folder location on my computer to see if it is getting larger (indicating actual backup) and it seems to just get to like 300kb (yes kb) and then just not really do anything...

Is anyone else having this issue? I really need some help identifying if my iphone/ipad is truly backing up or not.