It was a common complaint in the days following the release of the new iPod Touch 2.0 software – “My iPod Touch takes a long time to backup!”
I had taken up the practice of setting my device to sync at overnight before I went to bed – so it would be ready to go in the morning.
Also, within 10 days of the release – I took the plunge and signed up for the love it / hate it MobileMe service. Somehow along the way the backup issues dissipated.
I don’t know why.
UPDATE: I have noticed that if I sync my iPod Touch or iPhone often (like daily, every few days, or even weekly) the backup does not take as long. The longer I go between syncs the longer iTunes takes to perform the back – up.
I still see that the device is backing up when I sync. But it doesn’t take nearly as long.
Thank goodness!
Anyone else still having trouble?
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I’ve been to the Apple Store and told that my ipod touch was a few updates behind. So I come home and do the update. It says that it needs to backup the ipod (which contains only 450 mb of stuff) and its taking hours (not minutes which some people are complaining about). On Apple’s site, it says to simply click the x in the box and it will sync without backing up BUT there is no x in the box. Any suggestions?
yep click cancel.
Mine is taking forever so not cool its probably gonna take hours im updating form 3.1.1 software to 3.1.2
OMGEEE SO IS MINES ! Its PISSIN ME OFF ! I HAVE A IPOD TOUCH 2ND GENERATION AND IM TRYING TO UPDATE TO IOS4 AND IT TAKES FORVER TO BACKUP, AND I KEEP RETRYING BUT IT STILLS STAY ON BACK UP ! ARGH I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO ! I REALLY WANT IOS4!
thats exactly whats happening to me,
one little green square fills in then it like stops
duuude haha mines taking forever!!! grrr i hate it! it ussually doesnt take that long/: and im also trying to update it to the IOS4…eh yours probably updated already hahaha >:l
mine takes a realy long time when updating but others are faster
Hey, I WISH my iPod touch 2G could complete a backup in a few hours. Mine takes 2 1/2 DAYS (yes, days!) for a complete back-up. I am NOT kidding! I can’t see how this is possible. The long backups started after I started using an app that allows you to load files onto the iPod for viewing by the app (Files by Olivetoast). In my case, I have about 400 nested folders with about 16,000 photos. Typically, I reduced the photos to about 640×480 before loading them into the app. These 16,000 files are relatively small so they only take up a total of about 1 GB. Why 1 GB should take days to transfer during a backup is beyond my understanding.
Oh my gosh. My iPod is updating from 3.1.1 to 4.0 and it’s taking forever to back up. Like I deleted TONS of apps and stuff to maybe make it faster, but nothing. It’s really getting annoying as I have tried to restart numerous times and nothing is happening. Any suggestions?
As we speak im backing up to os 4 and its ridiculous, Its still at the beginning and hasn’t moved. But my guess is since i havn’t updated it in a while its going to take quite some time for me
I just unchecked everything so it wouldn’t sync any of the apps, movies or music, which brought the storage usage down to about 200 megs or so which only took about 30 minutes to backup.
Yep at first I thought it had crashed but then I realised I might just be waiting for it til Christmas. Dunno why I even bothered trying to update. Oh well *waits*
My ipod touch took 137hrs:23mins:32sec. to complete and when it finished there was an error so i re-updated it again which took a little over 4 years. I got over it after the first two years tho; I bought a wii that keep my mind off the whole backing-up load time charade. But now everything works fine. Thanks Apple I Love You!!
amen
yeah right. 4 years. sure. itouch was only out for about 5 years. -_- b****t man;
Gina ~
I do think Shane was exaggerating for effect. Sometimes it really does seem that long.
same for me. i could never finish the backup or ios4 download. i unchecked the music and video and some big apps in hope to lower the backup time
this is absolute b***t my ipod is taking ove 3 hours to bck up!
omfggg_- i deletedd all my songs thinkingg that it would go faster cus i have to sync my ipod to my new laptop anyways and ITS GOING EVEN SLOWER >;o . just kill me now i have no patience for this crap_-
Same here.. I’ve been trying to update to iOS4 for the past few hours. At first I thought maybe it was the computer so I restarted it a few times and closed out everything. Then I thought it was itunes so I uninstalled/reinstalled that. Nope. It’s just how long it takes. AN ETERNITY. Hour four and still counting.. at this point I will be happy if it even updates.
my 3rd gen itouch is a 32 gb tring to update to 4.1.1 and it has taken 6 hours and counting
ok, iv been trying to finish backing up my ipod for the whole weekend. i even left it overnight but the next day, the back up was still zero%. seriously, has this ever happened to anyone? im trying to update my ipod to version 4. Mine is version 3.12 right now. my sisters ipod got updated within a few hours. hers is version 3.13. i unplugged it and started it again but its still not working. Any suggestions? T.T
i know how you feel mine took forever i stated at 5:15 and it didnt finish til 9:50.
Ok i have the same problem as these guys and girls!
Im currently updating to the 4.1 from the 3.1.2. Yes i have realised i have missed a few updates. So my ipod touch takes normally a few minutes to back up but today when i backed it up it takes 3 hours to back-up, without me updating it.
But thats ok, cause i havnt done it in a while so i understand. But when i go to update it it backs up again, even though it is already backed up. But, it doesnt even complete the back-up, it just freezes at the end of 3 hours and comes up with a message saying “Error (-5000) Ipod was not backed-up. continuing without backup will result in loss of all data.”
Ok guys. I have already backed up. Ok. if i click continue, and all memory dies, can i click RESTORE and all the memory that was last backed up come back?
Hi Jarrod ~
How frustrating!
I just did a quick search and came across this support article at Apple.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1475?viewlocale=en_US
I know the issue is not exactly the same – but it does deal with the error(-5000).
Take a look – and please let us know what worked and how you resolved the issue.
Mine is taking soo long. glad to know it’s not just me having this problem.
I know – it is frustrating!
Uh! It takes so long and i only have an 8gb!! It sooo furstarting!
my ipod touch has been ‘backing up” for three days, so i hit cancel and its been hours and itunes just says “canceling back up”. what do i do? please help.
Oh my god! I didn’t know I had to keep updating, when i got my ipod, i just had my brothers girlfriend load music onto it from her computer.
I’m now finally updating it because I wasn’t aware that I had to. It says i have version 2.1.1! this is going to take forever, isn’t it? ):
Liz,
Most likely, yes, it will take awhile.
Many people are not aware that they need to sync up there iPods or iPhones with their computers regularly – so don’t worry to much – just get the job done!
this is epic crap, it takes forever, i need to backup and sync so i can get the new one, why is it so slow.
mnine too:(
I’m trying to back-up my 3g iPod Touch. It’s been stuck at 1 bar for the past 10 minutes with no sign of progress. What do I do?
this is taking way too long, but, by reading all the other peoples’ complaints, I guess I cant do much about it.
I’ve had my Itouch Backing up since 11:00 PM last night and its 4 PM now and its STILL backing up; its like trying to run something on dialup wth is this?
Apple obviously knows there is a problem. I try to stay away from the itunes store because,…I just don’t trust it. I kept my computer on overnight and the download bar did not move. I have been trying to get the update for about a year now. Ipod is great, but as you can see apple not really customer service oriented. “sales” oriented only.
I wish there was an answer to this thread,…I don’t want to go 36 hours and more and get an error code,…..
it only took 20 minutes for me which is good and it was my first time!!! And it was a 2 gen ipod is was from 3.1.2,now its a 4.2.1
doesn’t look like there’ll be a solution any time soon, which in turn means none of these touchs will be backed up therefore meaning it’ll take even longer when finally we do. Sort it out Apple, none of us have a spare few days to back our stuff up in, we got these appliances as they’re supposed to be QUICK!!
It has taken over a DAY to backup my 2nd gen ipod from 3.1 to 4.2.
Still counting, but it’s moving. Every few hours. My mom is nice enough to leave it on over night.
my ipod is taking too long to backup how long does it usually take???
after waiting and waiting i open task manager to force down ITunes
i hope this won break my ipod
i accidently unplugged my itouch during the back up…will this affect it?! i plugged it right back in though and nothing came up except for the ipod doesnt say syncing anymore! in addition, its taking over 9 hours so far…how much longer will it take??
yo the same thing is happening 2 me… everytime i try 2 back it up, it doesnt even move… by 2 hours it has 1 bar… is it actually doing somthing or wht?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!?? and theres not even an X button or nothin… its just the loading bar and the stop button… i dont get this!!
I have a ipod touch 4g the latest white one running ios5.0.1 and when i first got it and for a few weeks, it takes less than a minute to back-up and the whole sync is under 2 minutes, and now it takes more than 5 minutes to do the sync alone, backing up takes more than 1 minute i don’t know if that is significantly bad for the speed to sync, but reading you guys comment think that mine really is nothing. I then went to apple store and they tried to sync it on the apple, and it just completely failed apart, itunes does not even pop up. They told me to try it at home, but when i got home it TOOK OVER 4 HOURS TO DO SYNC! DAM THESE GENIUSES useless apple support
I really don’t know what to do. I have the 3rd generation iPod touch, and I let it attempt to backup for 29 hours over the weekend. It reached about 3/4 of the full backup before getting frozen. I disconnected it thinking that maybe if I downloaded the newest software for iTunes, it would go faster. Twice it couldn’t complete the download because of “errors.” I don’t know what to do besides let it back-up for God knows how long until it finishes. I only have about half it’s memory filled up and I have deleted some apps and songs. My back-ups prior to this only lasted an hour, at most.
)
Does anyone have any advice? I would really appreciate it. (Keep in mind, I’m 15 so I’m not THAT technologically savvy
Wow!! glad to know that not only me facing such problem!!!! In fact I have ipod 4G, still it is taking a long time to backup. It took almost 2 days and it annoyed me very much. Finally I stopped my laptop deciding to give it some rest!!!
Valuable suggestions are welcome!!!
omg i dont even no how long my ipod has been backing up this is driving me crazy there has to be a faster way to update this thing!!!!
my ipods has been backing up since 1pm on friday its taking the pee theres nothing on it except for the 0.18 gb applications that came on it all i want to do is put my albums on the bloody thing but nope it wont let me not back it else the whole thing crashes :@
ok so a friend jus told me to turn my internet off and restart my comp and try again leaving my internet off low and behold back up sync and adding my albums took 5 minuites..
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