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

Unfortunately the new iTunes 10.5.1 did not solve it for me. I still have the problem.

I downloaded the latest iTunes update (10.5.1) and also reset (i.e., rebooted) my iPhone. Now syncing is working again correctly.

Have installed iTunes 10.5.1, as well as iOS 5.0.1, and the problem still persists. If there is nothing new to copy from iTunes to the iDevice, the sync goes quickly, with no 'Waiting' hangs. But if I put some new photos into iPhoto, which iTunes then needs to copy in the final step of the sync, then I get a very long 'Waiting for items to copy' before the photos are finally copied over.

It seems like the delay is down to the iDevice itself, because it's pretty consistently a 5-6 minute delay with the iPad 2 and an 11-12 minute delay with the iPhone 3GS, which roughly matches their difference in CPU speed.

I have no idea if the log entries in the Mac's syncservices.log file are significant, but I observed the following during a sync in which 23 new photos were (eventually) copied to the iDevices.

iPad 2 - 'Waiting for items to copy' took 6 minutes 7 seconds

15:12:53 - Step 7 of 7 - Waiting for items to copy

syncservices.log entries around that time:

2011-11-15 15:12:26:362|AppleMobileSync|2626|30ba30|Stats|Stats| com.apple.MobileSync.e6c48dabf4cba421b3dd1b24726688d0ae03d08b: fast sync com.apple.mail.Account

2011-11-15 15:14:26:473|SyncServer|2619|110ff0|Server|Info| Cancelling all sync plans.

2011-11-15 15:14:26:476|SyncServer|2619|110ff0|Server|Info| Goodnight, Gracie.

15:19:00 - Step 7 of 7 - Copying photo [1,2,3..] of 23

syncservices.log entries around that time:

2011-11-15 15:19:10:453|SyncServer|2638|110ff0|Logging|Info| Logging initialized, engine version 578.3 : log level 3

iPhone 3GS - 'Waiting for items to copy' took 11 minutes 18 seconds

15:27:13 - Step 7 of 7 - Waiting for items to copy

syncservices.log entries around that time:

2011-11-15 15:25:55:775|AppleMobileSync|2657|30ba30|Stats|Stats| com.apple.MobileSync.81ecb042684579c88e233990a46a496759dfbfdc: fast sync com.apple.mail.Account

2011-11-15 15:27:55:926|SyncServer|2651|110ff0|Server|Info| Cancelling all sync plans.

2011-11-15 15:27:55:929|SyncServer|2651|110ff0|Server|Info| Goodnight, Gracie.

15:38:31 - Step 7 of 7 - Copying photo [1,2,3..] of 23

syncservices.log entries around that time:

2011-11-15 15:38:41:676|SyncServer|2695|110ff0|Logging|Info| Logging initialized, engine version 578.3 : log level 3

hi everyone. there is an answer for this somewhere online but we found a simpler solution than what was offered on the other page.

in finder, go to your iphoto library & say show package contents, then find "ipod photo cache" folder. rename it. we renamed ours ipod_photo_cache instead. all syncing problems solved. good luck.

here is the reference page that we used but we did not delete anything like the other page suggested, we just renamed the file.

http://leimobile.com/faq-how-to-fix-...o-sync-issues/

evidently, there is an issue with iOS5 recognizing the ipod photo cache library from prior versions. this should fix the sync issue.

Ok finally, after 2 hours of reading threads and trial and error. I got it to work well for me. I took everyones fixes and kind of mixed them together to get mine to work. Some said turn off genius bar, CHECK, trash “iPod Photo Cache”, CHECK, uncheck voice memos and trash from phone and iTunes, CHECK, (make a copy some where else if you want to keep them) then updated to lastest version of iTunes 10.5.1 from 10.5. CHECK

Then did a hard reboot on iPhone (4s) ex; holding both the home button and top button untill it shuts of and the apple logo pops back up , then let go of both buttons. hit sync again and FINALLY it worked. Went through all 8 steps with no problem.

Hopefully this will work for most poeple but i know it will work for just a few since everyone has differnt filesa and so on..... Apple really needs to come up with a fix that just fixes the problem for all. no matter what kind of files we have on our phone and computer. Was working before . no reason it shouldn't work now. I have had the iphone since the very first one and this in the only time i ever had a syncing problem. Its crazy, update to make better but makes it worse. Ha go figure.

Well, that's a pretty comprehensive collection of workarounds to get Apples iPads and iPhones working. Some work others don't, some are easy, some difficult, some loose data some don't.

Right Apple, you have enough clues. GET IT FIXED!

I've just been listening to a radio program that espouces Apple's commitment to perfection and of the high importance it places on customer satisfaction.

So GET IT FIXED!

The title of these forums are "Apple Support Communities", not "Apple Self-Support Communities".

There are hundreds of people on many such forums complaining of the same thing and I suspect many thousands of others who do not complain.

This is a significant problem.

Here in the UK, we have a great consumer program called "Watchdog", can I suggest that visitors to this forum send in a letter of complaint to them? http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog/gotastory/
At the very least, it may get a bit of a response from an otherwise silent Apple.

I agree, Apple needs to get their **** together. Lion has so many bugs I and they focus on "ICloud" releases. IOS 5, was also a bit disapointment when it comes to quality. Apple used to be equal to quality. For me, the last year apple has produced crap.

Try deleting your duplicate voice memos. that worked for me.

Between the original leimobile dot com fix and iTunes 5.1, my problem went away

@mossie05,

I have done a reset of my iPad (original, not 2) running iOS 5.0.1. I then setup the iPad from scratch; i.e., I did not set it up by restoring a backup to the reset iPad. I am still experiencing the problem.

It seems to me that all the various and sundry measures that have been reported to work have also been reported not to work. I am wondering whether the the real problem is something more mundane. Might it be that the new way of syncing just requires a lot more free space on the iDevice, and that, although all these measures probably free up some space, depending on how full your iDevice is, the additional free space still might not suffice to make an appreciable difference in the time that the iDevice needs to complete whatever it is doing while iTunes reports, "Wating for items to copy?" So that would explain why some measures work for some people, while for others -- I'm betting, for those who have lots of photos -- they do not.

Why would syncing now be appreciably different from syncing pre-iOS 5? Syncing over the air is now supported, and even if you're syincing over USB, the logic of both methods is probably still the same. So, whereas previously iTunes might have sent the iDevice each, say, new photo and waited for the iDevice to copy it to the Photos app and put it in all the right events and albums, now, in the interest to not consuming so much bandwidth with handshaking ("Here's a photo that goes in event such-and-such and these albums" ... "OK, done that" ... "Here's another photo ..." ...) the photos and instructions about what to do with them are sent in blocks which need to be stored in the iDevice. Of course, the iDevice must also be able to "undo" any partially complete block of changes if for some reason it does not succeed in syncing a block, and this probably requires more space than previously as well.

My iPad is showing 10.6 GB Audio, 2.7 GB Video, 24 GB Photos, 2.1 GB Apps, 0.08 GB Books and 0.72 GB Other, leaving 17.2 GB free. 17.2 GB would seem like more than enough space for a few new photos (typically, less than 100), but who knows.

Regards,

Richard

Check this link it worked like a charm

http://peter.upfold.org.uk/blog/2011/10/21/my-resolution-to-ios-5-waiting-for-it ems-to-copy-sync-issue/

Thanks, but I don't have any voice memos. As I said, there are many things that work for some, but not for others, and deleting duplicate voice memos is one of them.

Richard

I agree Richard Liu, and it seems to be more and more often this kind of things occur.

Before we had no worries with our Apple products. We knew when we bought them, they would "just work", out of the box, and appying patches and upgrading was pretty much flawless as well. Or when there was a problem it was quickly fixed. That's why we didn't mind paying the premium. But since a year or so, we've been having more and more problems, without any fixes (or we had to wait a long time for it), and now I feel like it's a risk upgrading to a new OS. I'd say that's a 180° spin on our confidence... and our willing to pay extra along with it 😟

I had problem without any voice memos. Only thing that worked for me was a restore from backup.

after reading some of everyone's posts, i finally had an easy solution that worked for my phone.

i found that some of my voice memos were greyed out, very similar to a screenshot someone posted on this thread. i ended up having to delete all my voice memos, and when i synced my phone, the memos were still on my phone. so i manually deleted all the ones from my phone as well. i synced it again, and it now it works perfectly.

my guess is to look around in your library and see if you see any weird files that might be greyed out. those files could be screwing up the syncing process. hope it works for everyone else.