Level 1

104 points

The ipad cannot be synced. An internal device error occurred.

Yesterday I updated my iPad Pro 9,7" to iOS 11. All went well. But when I thought I was entering my Apple ID for iTunes, I was tricked into iCloud. I never use iCloud. Not on my iMac and not on my iPad. I just don't want to use it.

When I opened my unwanted iCloud account every button was set to ON. It took me a lot of time to set every button to OFF. In the meantime a lot of my documents (photos) were copied to iCloud. I had to delete them from my iCloud Drive. After I logged out of iCloud I discovered that all my photos were deleted from my iPad.

Of course I had a backup on my iMac. I always sync my photos (and books and music) with iTunes on my iMac. I have updated iTunes to the latest version.

Never before I have had problems with this procedure. But this time all went wrong. It said there was no iBooks App and no Music App on my iPad and after that I discovered that all my books and music was deleted on my iPad.

Several times I got the message "The ipad cannot be synced. An internal device error occurred."

I tried all the usual things - restarted the iMac and the iPad / changed the cable (all Apple cables) / changed the USB port. I succeeded in restoring my books and my music but not my photos (more than 3000). It stops halfway with the above message and than only a few hundred photos are copied.

Before iOS 11 syncing with iTunes always worked great. Now I don't know what to do to solve this problem.

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Sep 22, 2017 2:53 AM

Top-ranking reply

beasterjr

Level 1

9 points

Posted on Oct 2, 2017 1:14 PM

I’ve spent several days dealing with this. The best solution was to erase all contents and data from my iPad and start over. I started by syncing just the photos, nothing else. I got the internal iPad error once. But all 103 photo albums had synced to placeholder icons along with about 400 photos which were synced to the correct albums. I hard rebooted the iPad and synced again and again and again over several hours. Hard rebooted every time. Eventually all photos 21,000+ synced to the iPad and into the appropriate albums. Only after that did I sync everything else which worked just fine. Good luck!

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449 replies

WSC33

Level 1

15 points

Oct 13, 2018 9:00 AM in response to Paardeslager

What version of iTunes are you using? And thanks for the input. I hope somebody with a Win 10 PC will weigh in!

Paardeslager Author

Level 1

104 points

Oct 13, 2018 9:07 AM in response to WSC33

iTunes 12.8.0.150. For macOS Sierra (10.12.6) that's the latest version. There is no 12.9 version as there is for Windows (as far as I know).

WSC33

Level 1

15 points

Nov 4, 2018 5:49 AM in response to Paardeslager

Just circling back to see if anyone with a PC has installed the latest iTunes and iOS updates and how they work with photos.... Anybody tested this?

Thx!

Nov 4, 2018 6:10 AM in response to WSC33

I have a PC, but I have not installed the latest iTunes or iOS updates. I have cold feet.

WSC33

Level 1

15 points

Nov 4, 2018 10:06 AM in response to Sunshine4a

Me too. Ice cycles.....

Jan 25, 2018 11:18 AM in response to shortywilliam

Does anyone know why Apple is not addressing this issue. I have a one year old iPad pro 10.9 inch that I love except for the photograph issue. I have about 15,000 photographs. I used to be able to sync all of them with my old iPad mini and now it's taken me months to get 12,000 synced. I still get the message, The iPad cannons be synced. An internal device error occurred. Sounds like they need to replace the iPad.

Paardeslager Author

Level 1

104 points

Sep 26, 2017 12:16 AM in response to beasterjr

Yesterday I set up my iPad as new - completely erased everything / reinstalled iOS 11 - and restored from a backup.

What can you do more? But the problem stayed. I can sync about 300 photos at a time and then it stops. Mostly without an error message. I had to copy more then 3000 photos, so I had to sync 9 times. On my iMac I had selected as a source the folder where all my photos are. I also tried sync with WiFi. Exactly the same problem. So it isn't the cable or the USB port.

At first I selected as a source the Photos app on my iMac, but then the result on my iPad was a complete mess. Photos I took 8 years ago were in between photos I took a week ago. All my carefully collected albums were also a mess. Some photos were even cropped.

I guess this is an iOS 11 bug.

Oct 29, 2017 8:28 PM in response to judeburg

i finally exchanged my iPad and it came with the old iOS 10.3.3 etc. Synced a large photo collection from my iMac and it did all 33,000 pictures without a problem I think the issue is with iOS 11, but i will confirm when i have the nerve to upgrade.

MichelPM

Level 10

81,525 points

Nov 3, 2017 5:18 PM in response to Paardeslager

Everyone should be posting direct feedback to Apple on this issue.

The ONLY way to get Apple’s attention on this issue is for everyone to post this issue to Apple’s feedback page here.

iPad Feedback

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html

Cognizant Apple employees read ALL feedback generated from all of the various feedback pages and transfers the data to the appropriate Apple personnel , but NO Apple employees will ever respond with any type of direct, individual replies from the feedback you post.

Good Luck to All!

Paardeslager Author

Level 1

104 points

Dec 4, 2017 1:48 AM in response to MichelPM

I just used your link to give feedback to Apple. Hope this will help.

I didn't know what a PITA was - I'am Dutch (in Holland we don't use abbreviations that much) - but i figured it out. And you're right, this sure is a real PITA issue.

Paardeslager Author

Level 1

104 points

Dec 8, 2017 9:05 AM in response to Sunshine4a

Sunshine4a,

I just installed this update a few minutes ago. Including a new Safari and a security update - all for OS X El Capitan.

For now I didn't see any changes, but as always I had to change back some settings in Safari. Always a good idea to have a careful look at the preferences after an update.

I'm glad you tested the new version already. Less work for me. There was no mention of a special bug repair in the release notes, so there was little reason for hope.

Waiting time again...

MichelPM

Level 10

81,525 points

Dec 14, 2017 4:48 AM in response to Sunshine4a

Photo Manager Pro AND another app, called PhotoSort, will let you FTP over WiFi entire folders/sub folders of images back and forth from Mac to iDevice.

Your folder structures stay intact.

Same thing with a cloud, offsite data storage/transfer service, like DropBox, BOX, One Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive, etc..

Everything you put into these cloud, offsite data storage/retrieval servics stays intact!

Folder/sub folders all stay intact!

The data you put into these data storage services stays the way the data is setup!

I use DropBox all the time. What goes in is what comes out,

iCloud is NOT the same thing. All iCloud is is a data synchronisation service.

iCloud is NOT really a data storage/retrieval system. At least, not yet!

Dec 19, 2017 1:35 AM in response to Sunshine4a

No fix as yet. Just an update from what I have been told by Apple today. My ticket has been open with Apple since mid September and I have tried everything that they suggested but he problem still exists. Twice in the last 3 days my advisor from Apple (Darryl) has rung me to ask if I can share my screen as he has a few new things that he wants to try. We also use Quicktime Player to records my screen so that can be passed on to whoever. Needless to say that the latest round of suggestions didn’t work. Darryl then told me that the error which refers to an “internal device error” is a connection problem between iTunes and the iDevice running iOS 11 and above. According to the Apple Engineers that he has been in contact with they believe that it is a problem is with iTunes more so than the iOS. Darryl said that they are also some Apple advisors who are having the same problem and they are also working directly with Apple Engineers to fix the problem Todays recorded session all 114 minutes of it will be forwarded to Apple Engineers for viewing and examination. I guess I wait for the next round of suggested fixes.

Oh, and as for iMazing I purchased it but found it totally useless. I couldn’t sync my whole Photo library across to my iPad. You have to first export the photos you want on your iPad into folders and sub folders and it’s these folders that iMazing syncs. That’s not what I want.

Cheers Gary

Dec 25, 2017 7:19 PM in response to Sunshine4a

I've tried iCloud, but couldn't get it to work with my Mac's photo and my wife's expanded iCloud account. When I took photos with my iDevice, it was a real pain to get them to my Mac's Photos.

I'm having other problems loading photos from memory cards to my Mac's Photos, then ejecting the memory card. Apparently I don't get the whole picture onto Photos, and it wants me to mount the original before it can do stuff like exporting the photo.

What's wrong with Apple?

Jan 5, 2018 1:59 AM in response to chengpoh

Hi Chengpoh

I uninstalled iTunes from my PC (Windows 10) and reinstalled it but on change, as already said wasted hours so pleased to find out with this community it's not my fault and nothing I can do. I now have two iPhones and iPad that are more or less useless to me as well.

Sunshine4a, I am also the only person I know that uses the PC to organise my photos for iPad/iPhone.

Apple need to get it sorted but what are the chances? Is there a contact email we can all write to? I tried the account support email but they just gave the phone number to technical support. I think a complaint would be better in writing and we know technical support can't fix the issue so phoning them would be a waste of time!

Best wishes

Andrew

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The ipad cannot be synced. An internal device error occurred.