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

Paardeslager Author

Level 1

104 points

Mar 29, 2018 12:04 PM in response to Paardeslager

Looking at the date that I started this thread made me realize that it is now more then half a year ago that this problem started. More then half a year and still no solution from Apple.

Congratulations Apple - this must be a record. Great support.

I just read the release notes for iOS 11.3, and - not much to my surprise - there is no mention of a fix for the photo sync problem. I guess we all have to wait for another half year at least, or forever.

Maybe it's time to give up on Apple.

MrHuang

Level 1

8 points

Mar 30, 2018 3:37 PM in response to Paardeslager

I had some spare time this weekend to finally update my iPad from ios10 to ios11. I thought this would be a good opportunity to start fresh and reset the iPad.

I run into this problem while trying to sync my 2500 photos (about 8gb) from Win 10 PC to iPad mini 4. The transfer speed is incredibly slow. The error message would pop up about 40-50 minutes into transfer and then sync failure.

I have the lasted version of itunes and ios 11.3. This is really frustrating because now I can't even use my iPad for its intended purpose. These kinds of issues should have been caught by QA...

Paardeslager Author

Level 1

104 points

Apr 10, 2018 12:24 AM in response to Sunshine4a

Same here. I will never use iCloud. I will never put any of my photos or other stuff on a server in the USA.

I too believe that Apple wants us all to use iCloud and therefore made syncing with iTunes impossible.

I don't know if this is plain greed, but what I do know is that Apple is losing loyal customers because of this.

Apr 10, 2018 2:52 AM in response to Paardeslager

Hello,

I have reached again the Apple Support, I sent them all the tickets with the different visits to Apple Stores, the two ipad replacements I had, and all the stuff.

After some research, the advisor told me that the case was in engineering division, that will be fixed in future releases. No deadline. Don't know what release will it be.

I have asked to escalate the ticket to an upper level, but it seems there is no way to do that. Only option I have is to make a complain to: http://www.apple.com/feedback/which means to start over.

So, it is really odd that a big company as Apple is not giving a deadline, I work in software, I know software have bugs, I am not surprised for the error, I am surprised for them not reacting.

Cheers,

jack.

Apr 10, 2018 3:45 AM in response to jack.barcelona

The Senior Apple Advisor that I was working with for weeks around the holidays has ghosted me. He does not respond to my voicemails or emails anymore. We spent hours on the phone doing screen shares and saving error reports that he sent to the engineers. I think it has been about 4 or 5 months since I last heard from him. He had told me that he would stay on my case until it was resolved, and that he would keep in touch. However, a deadline was never given. In addition, he said that security fixes took precedent over photos which sounded reasonable to me. The fact that he doesn’t even answer me anymore has me upset. I honestly do not even know if he still works for Apple.

Paardeslager Author

Level 1

104 points

Jun 11, 2018 12:15 PM in response to Sunshine4a

To answer my own question. Apple today released a second beta for iOS 11.4.1.

See: https://9to5mac.com/2018/06/11/ios-11-4-1-tvos-11-4-1-beta-2/

And about a week ago there was a first beta. It is very depressing that that first beta has broken the photo syncing again. I hope that the people who are testing these betas can keep us update about this. So that we can be sure that it is safe to update when a final official update is released.

Jun 11, 2018 3:33 PM in response to Sunshine4a

I had the opposite; after several successful syncs with both my iPad 6th gen and my iPhone 6, last night I added a folder with 109 photos and synced both devices. All photos transferred, but while the iPad had them in the desired album, the iPhone had them in the photostream with no album added.

A second sync sorted out the problem with the iPhone but it's annoying; both devices are running the same 11.4 version of iOS and both are talking to the same installation of iTunes. Why the intermittent issues?

I've been too frightened to try the 11.4.1 beta after reading in multiple places about the sync bug recurring. To be fair to Apple, this phenomenon of old bugs (or at least old symptoms) recurring with new releases is not unique to them or their software although they do seem to suffer more frequent occurrences. I suspect it's a QA problem with modern branching/trunking/versioning processes used in software development. It doesn't make it any less frustrating, though.

Paardeslager Author

Level 1

104 points

Jul 12, 2018 1:12 AM in response to WSC33

Before the last update of iTunes I already went back to version 12.7.3.

All the new versions - also the latest 12.8 - have an awful bug: in album view it shows a lot of albums with blank covers. Even albums that were bought from iTunes. Another bug that Apple didn't resolve.

For me the combination of iOS 11.4. plus iTunes 12.7.3. works - the syncing of photos goes flawlessly.

So I stick to that until I'm sure 11.4.1. is okay.

Paardeslager Author

Level 1

104 points

Jul 21, 2018 11:30 AM in response to WSC33

WSC33

I just updated my iPad Pro 9.7 to iOS 11.4.1, using iTunes 12.7.3.

After that i immediately synced a series of new photos. As always I selected all photos and albums. All went well. All new photos synced and all were placed in the right albums. All my albums on my iPad are exactly the same as the albums on my iMac. So for me it was a complete succes.

But Sunshine4a (see above) still has problems but is using a windows computer to do the sync and has used another version of iTunes (12.8). So it still doesn't seem to work for everybody.

Jan 5, 2018 5:37 AM in response to Andrew9717

Andrew9717,

I started with the 1 800 support number. My call was bumped up from a first line advisor to a senior advisor who has worked closely with me running diagnostics and contacted the engineers. However, he was the 3rd senior advisor that I worked with. The first 2 didn’t seem to really care and never contacted me back. The first line support were clueless. Many in this forum have worked with senior advisors. There is an email address that you can write to. However, without a case number, I’m not sure who gets it. The address is acsupportcase@apple.com. If you call the 1 800 number, I’d ask to speak to a senior advisor.

Apr 8, 2018 6:54 PM in response to Paardeslager

Same here… I have updated, but I don’t even bother to try to sync anymore. My confidence in a fix has dwindled away. Now just to figure out my next step, without Apple.

Apr 29, 2018 9:00 AM in response to Sunshine4a

Finally got it, I sync'ed 11.000 pictures, worked fine. Let's wait for the official code. Cheers. J.

Aug 13, 2018 8:19 AM in response to WSC33

The latest updates. I had to sync one photo folder ar a time or a few at a time. Frustrating

WSC33

Level 1

15 points

Dec 4, 2018 1:17 PM in response to Paardeslager

Has anyone updated iCloud, itunes and iOS to newest and had success with syncing photos on a PC yet?

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