Syncing stays on 'waiting for items to copy' with iOS 5

I SOLVED MY PROBLEM ON MY IPHONE 4. Thanks to nodrog666 for pointing me in the right direction, but my situation was a little more complex. Yes it did appear to be the Voice Memos. I backed up and deleted all the Voice Memos off of my iPhone and iTunes; however, after syncing again I still got the infamous "Waiting for Items to Copy" message.

After a little exploration, I found that I had some orphaned voice memos that wouldn't go away. What I mean is on my iPhone they were not showing up in the Voice Memo App nor in the iPod App, but if I had my iPhone plugged in and selected it in the device list in iTunes, expanded the arrow next to it so I could view the contents on my iPhone, I had about 23 voice memos in that list. I could Get Info on them and play them but not delete them. Again these were there, but not in the Voice Memo App. This is how I when about solving my problem.

In order to fix this, I had to Restore my phone, but I was very systematic in my approach so I wouldn't loose any of my app data. Here is what worked for me, but perform at your own risk.

1. Make sure you have iOS 5 installed on your device and are running iTunes 10.5 (you probably wouldn't be viewing this thread otherwise)
2. Backup and Delete all voice memos on your iPhone and in iTunes. I was able to sync them to my iTunes library before the sync failed, then view them and drag them to a backup folder on my desktop.
3. Plug you iPhone (or iPod) in via the USB sync cable
4. Under the MUSIC tab for your device, uncheck "Include voice memos" and apply.
5. Select "Back up to this Computer" and not "Back up to iCloud" (and apply)
6. Disable WiFi Sync (and apply)
7. Sync your device (it will probably fail at the end with the "Waiting for Items to Copy" message and you will have to unplug it. IMPORTANT: While it is syncing watch to make sure it makes a backup of your device as you will need this later).
8. Click "RESTORE" from the summary tab in iTunes. NOTE: THIS WILL ERASE ALL DATA ON YOUR DEVICE. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A GOOD BACKUP. This is what I needed to do to get rid of the orphaned files that was causing the sync to choke.
9. After the restore is completed, RESTORE FROM BACKUP using the recent backup of your device.
10. After the restore from backup is complete, check to make sure your apps etc have all their data to confirm you have a successful restore.
11. If you wish to sync Voice Memos, re-enable it.
12. Try syncing a couple times via the USB cable to make sure it functions as expected. If everything appears to be good, you can re-enable WiFi Sync at this point.

Above I refer mostly to iPhone, but you should be able to do the same step with an iPod touch or iPad. Hope this helps some others out. It drove me nuts for a long time.

Aaron

I don't have voice memo's either. The Apple representative told me to switch from "back phone up to iCloud" to have it back up to the computer. Her take was that the iCloud was jammed because of so many users and this was causing the problem.

Well, I think she was just conjecturing. The first time I tried that it worked, but it hasn't worked since. Still gets stuck on "Syncing music....waiting for items to copy".

HOWEVER, I just ejected the iPhone (iPhone 4 on my Mac OS 10.7.2, iTunes 10.5) at that point, and it seems fine.

So, maybe the temporary solution is to eject your phone when it gets to the "waiting for items to copy"?

Deleted all my voice memos and it solved the problem. There's a bug in the system for sure.

Deleting voice memos seem to work for me

yes add me to the long list too 😮

"Waiting for items to copy"

Copying a file and then copying hundreds of files to Genius over and over again

Sync never completing

I think we need to wait for Apple to fix this.

It would be nice to see an Apple response to our woes ( hint!!!!! )

Same for me... that's a real pain... we need a fix !

or a clear simple recipe to fix that...

Same **** problem "waiting to items to copy" o "wainting for changes to be applied" just that I cant restore from a backup cause the last voice memos I recorded can´t be lost and are the ones I haven't been able to tranfer to my mac, any other suggestion?

I turned off Genius!

Deleted voice memos on my phone and itunes and it works fine now.

Same here. I deleted Voice Memos and the sync went to completion.

What's the deal, Apple?

Restore to original factory settings then restore from backup. Worked for me. Syncs fine now.

Doing a restore fixed this issue for me. Then I retrieved my IPhone setup from the backup I had on my macbook

yup, the first two times I tried to sync my ipod touch 4th gen this happens...it syncs everything and then gets stuck on the last step 7/7, it takes forever for it to finish...but it worked this time! so i dunno whats up with it

I am having this issue with my iPad 2. (Interestingly, not with my iPhone 3GS; it's still syncing fine.) I see a lot of people have had success by deleting Voice Memos on the iPhones, but i don't think that's even a feature on the iPad. (If i'm mistaken and theres's somewhere to look for this, please let me know.)

I've also seen that some have turned Genius off, but i'm not sure if that's on the iTunes Store, the iPad/iPhone itself or what. If anyone's had success on an iPad 2, short of restoring to factory settings and then restoring from backup, please let me know. (I'm not entirely convinced my backup isn't corrupted.)

Having looked at all the responses, fixes, workarounds etc, as well as my own experiences and testing, I am now fairly confident that the issue lies in some residual files not completely cleared just prior to update.

For example, if you had a voice memo, or in my case, a rental video that had expired, and had not been synchronised prior to the upgrade to v5, then in many cases, that can no longer be deleted.

As a consequence, these filenames are effectively orphaned and regardless of attempts to delete will continue to attempt to synchronise.

The problem with attempting some of the workarounds suggested here is that not all of them work in all cases and there is a risk of lost data, particularly game scores and so on.

I really do think that this is an issue that Apple Support need to address in the form of either a patch or minor version release.

Come on Apple, this issue is all over the Internet now with a significant number of your users affected. Not just those that shout on this 'Apple Support Communities' forum, but the silent ones too.