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

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!

The 11.4 beta(s) worked for me and a few other posters in here. You can enroll your device for the public beta if you're willing to risk it, or wait for the official 11.4 drop.

Note that this only fixes the "internal device error" or silent timeout problems. If you're also suffering from the interminably slow photo sync problem (the two in combination are the perfect storm of frustration) you'll have to roll back to an earlier version of iTunes until Apple fixes that too.

Since switching to iOS 11 I've been suffering from a combination of three different problems with iTunes photo syncing; the interminably slow "Reading photos..." problem (common to both my iPhone 6 and iPad 6th Gen) and a mixture of "internal device error" failures and the sync simply stopping after only 250-350 photos had transferred (only on the iPad).

I've just tried iOS 11.4 public beta 2 on the iPad and it seems to have cured the latter issue(s). All 6000+ of my photos have transferred successfully with no internal device errors or early sync cancellations. I've not tried this on the iPhone; I had some serious issues the last time I ran beta software on it, so I'm sticking with the non-mission-critical hardware for now.

(One clue that this was more promising than before was that the purple "Photos" portion of the bar in iTunes that represents the device's storage leapt up to a full 19.7GB as soon as it finished counting the contents of the Photos folder, even before I'd hit the Sync button. I don't remember it doing this before).

Alas what the beta still hasn't cured is the long-standing slow "Reading photos..." problem that occurs for subsequent syncs, when iTunes and/or the device is comparing the iPod Photo Cache folders. As mentioned in numerous threads, one way around this is to delete that folder before each sync; it means the whole thing has to be rebuilt which takes time, but not nearly as much time as the "Reading photos..." phase does with a large library and/or a slow machine.

Indications are that Apple are eventually fixing these bugs, whether by design or by accident. The biggest unknowns, as ever, are what their priorities are and how long before we can expect a complete solution.

This echoes my experience. Unfortunately the long delay is almost certainly due to the "Reading photos from..." / cache problem, which seems to be an iTunes issue rather than an iOS bug. I've taken the advice from another thread and rolled my iTunes (Windows) back to 12.7.3.46 which has restored the speedy sync. Whether this temporary rollback will cause other problems remains to be seen, but at least I can now add extra photos to my library without needing to set aside three or four hours for the sync.

Well the anticipation was too much. I went ahead and downloaded the beta profile and installed iOS 11.4 beta 2 onto my iPad air. The lure of a successful photo sync was too much for me to deny. I can report that YES iTunes photo sync from my Mac to my iPad air does in fact work. Success! It appears that Apple has finally fixed it. But, the key (as you said above) is that you first have to turn on iCloud photo library to delete all your iPad photos, ghost folders, and the residual "syncing...." message at the bottom of the albums window view. After iCloud photo library completes the turn on process, wait a moment and turn it back off. Back over on iTunes, I used "selected albums" for my sync and it works. Subsequent syncs adding folders worked as well. No iPad internal fail message, no partial transfers - it all worked. It only took 7 months for Apple to get here, but I can finally say that I am one happy camper!

I'm on 12.73.46 for Windows which I got from here. For both OSX and Windows there's a page of older versions listed here that all seem to be legitimately hosted on Apple servers, but I haven't confirmed that the links are still active.

You'll also need to revert to an earlier version of your iTunes library (these are stored as .itl files in the Previous iTunes Libraries folder alongside your current library) because the older iTunes won't understand the latest version. This means you'll lose any added songs / books / updates / play counts etc. since the last upgrade, but if you sync a device (or if you only use cloud-based music) most things should reorganise.

You can either copy the old library over the new before launching iTunes, or you can do it manually by holding down the Shift key on Windows or the Option key on OSX when launching iTunes which will give you a prompt as to which library you want to browse to.

Back everything up beforehand, in case it goes wrong. iTunes is actually very good at handling multiple libraries -- my wife and I used to keep separate ones and switch between them frequently -- but Apple being Apple there are no guarantees.

All of this is very much a PITA but if you frequently sync photos it'll save your sanity until Apple fixes whatever problem is causing the slow sync.

Ok so I repaired the Photos Library by holding down Ct-Alt while opening Photos and now the internal error is gone but iTunes still quits unexpectedly during the sync. I think it is running out of allocated memory. I have also tried turning off WiFi on both the Mac and the device in order to avoid any changes to the Photo Library emanating from iCloud in the midst of the sync but iTunes is still quitting unexpe

I hate to say this out loud, but I just put the new 11.2.5 on my iPad that's been failing since the 11.0 update, and the problem isn't there anymore. All photos synched. Then I made changes to some photos on Mac and synced again and those changes were reflected on my iPad with no errors. Going to test some more, but so far.......

In my case, restoring ipad, deleting ipod cache, and having ipad synch from a file folder of all 11,000 of my photos instead of Photos library worked. Repairing the library did not solve the problem. Since then I’ve added a few photos here and there to the folder and resynched successfully. My recommendation is to not synch with Photos app but instead synch with file folder-based photos outside of Photos.

I’ll update this message if things go sour. Certainly Apple should be ashamed of itself…..charging premium prices for seriously flawed products and denying or failing to solve problems.

I shouldn't have even mentioned the ipod cache....that was when I was still trying to synch with Photos library. My best advice is to delete ipad backups (ITunes preferences - Devices), restore ipad as new ipad, and then synch from scratch with folders. Good luck.

I am also trying iOs 11.4 Beta 2 an I can now sync again my pictures (16.314) to my iPad. I ust say it took a long time form 9:00 in the morning to 17:00 in the afternoon. But now all my pictures are now on my iPad again with no error messages.

Success?! I'm reluctantly hopeful, but not confident that Apple won't break it again. Since Fall 2017 when all of these photo syncing issues with ios 11 began, I have been following this discussion and trying all the suggestions. I have an iPad Air 2, iPhone 6 and iPhone 8 Plus. With every release of iOS and iTunes, I've attempted the sync but it always failed. Until today!

I enrolled the iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6 in the public beta program a long while ago and have been testing each beta release since. The most recent public beta release, 11.4 beta 4 appears to have solved my syncing issue. It worked great on the iPhone 6 and also on the iPad Air 2, when every previous attempt failed. All 15,500 photos synced and my folders/albums are back. No errors on either device. I DID delete the iPod Photo Cache before attempting any syncs. My iPhone 8 Plus is not in the public beta program, but running iOS 11.3 - I do not want to corrupt the photos it DOES have until 11.4 is released and hopefully is the solution we've all been waiting for. And just for clarity, I am running Windows 10 and iTunes 12.7.4.80, which is the most recent release.

Crossing my fingers...

The slow sync is an iTunes problem, not iOS. Until Apple acknowledges and/or addresses it you can work around it by reverting to an earlier version of iTunes.

As for the albums not being in sync, I’ve seen this happen a couple of times when the sync status has become confused. I worked around it by syncing just one folder and then, once the iPad has updated, syncing everything again. It’s annoying but it does work. Others have had success by temporarily turning on iCloud Photos (which erases all synced content on the iPad) then turning it off and syncing through iTunes again.