Slow Sync between iPhone & Computer

I rebooted & then reauthorized my PC. I can successfully synch one folder at a time, but it takes more than 2 hours. This used to take 5 minutes!

Same here goes on for hours or all night .

This really ***** after have new pc built and moving off old windows xp.

Same issues with syncing movies.

Same on ipad pro.

Thank you.

Works perfect!

Come on Apple, fix this error now!.🙂

Should note that I have a fairly new iPad Pro.

Did not work for me.

Thank you for that notice! Have deleted cache, updated iTunes and the sync takes less than 5 minutes.

Yup. At least for me, during the time it's taking forever, iTunes is saying "Reading photos from <my photo directory>" at the top of its window. The iTunes process is using about 8% of my cpu, but it doesn't seem actually to be doing anything useful during that time. Anyone else have a similar experience?

arkoenig wrote:

My experience is totally different from this. If I delete the iPod Photo Cache and then sync 6,000 files, it takes about an hour. If I then try exactly the same sync again, which should copy no files at all, it takes TWO DAYS.

In other words, when there are a lot of files in the cache, iTunes spends much more time examining the files in the cache than it does recreating them if they are not there in the first place.

Probably true to be fair. I've been doing most of my experimentation using one or two folders containing small batches of photos where the difference in time isn't so great. I'd forgotten just how horrendously long it takes to check a fully populated cache.

Also, I've done a bit more digging on the "Cancelling sync" issue and it seems as though the two problems are almost certainly related. I found this thread...

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

...from September last year that is still ongoing, highlighting both of these issues. Majority consensus on that thread seems to be that it's iOS 11 that's to blame rather than iTunes, with some users reporting no problems at all if they used an older iOS 10 device. And while my gut is still telling me that the cache checking problem must be a local iTunes / file system issue, I guess it could also be caused by the device itself not providing the correct feedback to iTunes when asked.

I should note that at time of writing I have only seen the "Cancelling sync" problem on the 6th generation iPad where I've been doing most of my testing; I can't recall seeing it on the iPhone 6. The iPhone did always complete its sync eventually, even if it had to be left overnight. Whether this is relevant, or just coincidence, only time will tell. I will switch back to using the iPhone for testing purposes. I half expect it to also exhibit the "Cancelling sync" issue now.

My faith in Apple has gone though some shaky periods in the past but this is just about the worst case of ignoring a problem that I've seen. The other thread is full of anecdotes about customers in direct contact with Apple both in person at the Store and on the phone, dealing with multiple tiers of Apple support and "senior engineers", and there's still no solution to a problem that first appeared over six months ago. It's unbelievable.

If my two new iPads weren't gifts they'd be going back tomorrow. I have a couple of Android devices in my collection and I hate Android, it's such a nightmare to configure, but at least when problems occur it's possible for users to find their own solutions or workarounds. With Apple you can spend days confirming that there's an issue, weeks getting them to acknowledge it, and months waiting for a fix that might never come.

Whatever happened to "it just works"?

denali_uk wrote:

I should note that at time of writing I have only seen the "Cancelling sync" problem on the 6th generation iPad where I've been doing most of my testing; I can't recall seeing it on the iPhone 6. The iPhone did always complete its sync eventually, even if it had to be left overnight. Whether this is relevant, or just coincidence, only time will tell. I will switch back to using the iPhone for testing purposes. I half expect it to also exhibit the "Cancelling sync" issue now.

For the record, I tried syncing the iPhone yesterday, having deleted the cache, and it successfully synced all 6720 photos after an hour or so. Trying the same thing with the iPad gave an "internal device error" after a couple of hundred photos had transferred and then, after resetting the iPad, a second attempt resulted in the "Cancelling sync" problem after only 329 photos had synced. It looks as though these two problems, although possibly related, may manifest differently on different hardware. Just to muddy the waters a bit more.

I've just this minute tried the iPad again, this time with iTunes running as Administrator as suggested by someone further up the thread. This didn't help; I still got the internal device error after 372 photos had synced.

Until Apple fixes this the only conclusions I can reach are:

If your hardware does not exhibit the "device error" or "Cancelling sync" problems, the fastest way to sync is to delete the iPod Photo Cache each time, even if you're only adding a gnat's sac worth of new photos, and leave it for a couple of hours or overnight if your photo collection is huge. This is ridiculously annoying, but it does seem to work.

If your hardware does exhibit the "device error" or "Cancelling sync" problems, you're SOL. Keep checking these threads and other sources in case someone stumbles upon an answer, otherwise wait for a fix or find a third-party solution.

I hate this ****** bug. I really like the built-in iOS 11 Photos app. Its handling of folders --> albums could be improved but I like the way it reads data and location metadata from non-Apple sources so you can use it to organise DLSR and even scanned photos. I also like its simplicity, ubiquity, and the very smart "people" organiser that does everything on the device instead of uploading thousands of folks' faces to God knows where.

But it's all kind of pointless if it doesn't work, and Apple's policy of playing their cards close to their chest means we've no idea whether they're working feverishly on solving this problem or have consigned it to the "meh" pile. 😟