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

Hi Sunshine4a

What I did is check about 4 or 5 folders then sync, once completed check another 4 or 5 folders still leaving the previous ones checked so they weren’t removed.

I tried to make it about 100 photos at a time and it worked until I got to 10,000 photos transferred then it came with a new error and would not go any further, then kept coming up something about iTunes library memory issue. I then gave up.

yesterday updated to the latest itunes version, restoring ipad air 2 to 11.2.2 firmware. clean start.
tried deleting ipod photo cache, turning off icloud backup.

and still nothing works.
my ipad air 2 is copying around 200-600 photos at a time and it automatically stop syncing on itunes.
then i tried to copy a few folder of photos at a time, and it still got the message ipad cannot be synced, internal device error occured.

luckily my iphone 8+ can sync all 15800+ photos albeit it takes a very long long time ( almost 1 hour+ ).

i hope apple can release a fix for this problem quickly..

paid premium for apple products and get this super annoying problem for more than 2months !!

I also have a lot of photos (hence the 128GB iPad 9.7) I have the same approach just keep pushing the sync button when it falls over after about 300 photos. This works until the internal device error message stops everything. A cold boot and restarting iTunes seems to be the only thing that works then. I hope Apple do listen to our problem here.

Hi all - second post on this thread. Upgraded Macbook Pro to 10.13.3; iPad Air 2 to 11.2.5, and tried again. First sync attempt transferred 385 out of 14,328 photos. Second attempt - the usual "The iPad "xxx" cannot be synced. An internal device error occurred". Then iTunes froze - that's new! I added the sync failure history to the crash data sent to Apple, and will again send a bug report. I would therefore not recommend these updates as a solution to this failure. Not good.

iTunes 12.7.3 came out today (01.27.18) and I was very excited thinking they fixed the issue where I could not sync my iPad to iTunes. I keep on getting an internal device error. I have spent two months on the phone with a rep who kept asking me to send my logs/info to them. Still not working. What a disappointment with Apple. The iPhones sync fine. The iPads are the issue. They keep on telling me it is an "iTunes" issue. I have 22,000 pics I am trying to sync.

Hi WSC33,

I have a PC, not a Mac as well. The app resides on my iPad and iPhone. There is an option in iTunes to transfer data via certain apps, I believe it’s data transfer or transfer data. When you click on this option, which is on the left side of iTunes, it shows the apps that allow you to transfer data. From there, I was able to copy my photos from my PC to my iPad. I had to play around with it for a little while, amd it’s not as efficient as iTunes used to be, but it worked.

No problem; I used the app Photo Manager Pro 5. Its not super efficient, and I didn’t load all of my photos, but I loaded my favorite photos into this app. It will have to do until this problem is resolved.

I downloaded and then deleted several other photo apps. Photo Manager Pro was by far the best photo app that I could find. In fact, it was recommended by somone else in this thread. Like you said, this is a temporary solution until Apple resolves the problem.

Bought my iPad last Wednesday. Syncing and setup all seemed to go fine, until I found my photos had mysteriously ended up in the Cloud and not on my iPad. Then found several Cloud switches had been set ON without me having done anything.

Changed settings and started syncing photos but then started getting the "The ipad cannot be synced. An internal device error occurred.". Came to this forum looking for help/info.

Good news (A): seems this is a known, reasonably common problem that Apple is aware of and should be fixed one day.

Good news (B): I'm making headway syncing a couple of times each evening. Copied almost 10,144 photos from my Mac to the iPad.

Good news (C): I haven't read anywhere that I need to take my new iPad back to the shop for an exchange.

Hello,

I have exactly the same problem. I have spent a lot of hours at Apple Store to get support, and now I am waiting for the second replacement of my device, as Apple says this is the solution.

I have tried with 2 different windows computers, but Apple staff told me they are not allowed to "touch" a windows computer. So I prepared the Mac of my son, with all the pictures, and the problem persisted.

Apple staff told me it was because a photo was corrupted, or there was some strange file. I did exactly same operation with an iPhone 6, with an iPhone 7, and with my old but reliable iPad first Generation ... and sync was PERFECT !!!

I am now waiting the second iPad replacement, as this is what Apple staff says, that it is a device problem.

I have tested all of this with my original iPad as well as with the first iPad replacement (from Apple). Now I am waiting to my second iPad replacement. It seems Apple staff thinks this is a device problem.

Of course everything is updated: iTunes, IOS. I have created the iPad as new iPad, not using the backup.

It is really frustating.

Any Help is very welcome.

Cheers,

J.

They told me the same: file corrupted. But same photos (same files) syncs perfect with iphone 6, iphone 7, and iPad 1st generation. So the problem is not in corrupted files.

APPLE FIX THE PROBLEM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers,

Jack

Adding my name to this crowd. I had 37k photos on my iPad. When I just updated ti 11.3, I had lots of crashes in many different apps, but my wife's identical iPad did not, so I figured it was my own corruption. Decided to erase and restore backup, which solve the crashing. But, I cannot reload my files, at least with a cable. I am trying WiFi sync now, maybe that will work. At least that uses different hardware, so maybe get around the "device error". NOPE - just saw it ( in iTunes on my iMac ) quit syncing, although without any error message - it just quit. I just clicked sync again, but it quit after only a few more photos.

No, it does have nothign to do with the size, it is because of a software bug, recognised by Apple, my iPad 1st generation syncs perfect same photos that makes my new iPad crash. The Apple advisor that took the case is no longer answering my questions. It is really frustrating. Cheers. Jack.

I've experienced the problem before iOs11 and iTunes 12.7 It occurs whenever I try to sync more than around 1000 photos from a folder on the Mac to the iPad. But it works syncing to the iPhone. If the iPhone already has the majority of the photos installed from a working previous backup, it does an ok job adding a few new images. But not in a clean install where all the photos require a new sync.