11-06-2010, 10:29 AM

It's about time someone said this out loud, but the iPad syncing is completely messed up. There are two fundamental problems - one is that videos often don't sync on the first time of asking, and the other is inordinately long backup times (I'm talking 3, 4, 5 or up to 14 hours).

Until yesterday, I'd seen my iPad take 3 or 4 hours, but never longer than that, but it finally look 14 hours to back up yesterday.

There are two theories to the backup issue. One is that all the tiny files in applications like Zinio, Wall Street Journal, Wired, Esquire, The New Yorker etc, all get written one at a time on your Mac or PC's HDD and then validated. Indeed, if you check the backup logs, you can see literally hundreds of thousands of 4k files being written and read for hours on end. This happens almost exclusively when you download new 'reader' apps to your iPad directly, rather than from iTunes, because the sync issue is only one way.

Another theory is that actually iTunes does't 'sync' to these files at all, that in fact iTunes tries to re-download all of the content you downloaded directly to your iPad to weed out jail-broken devices. Either way, I am now in the position where I won't plug in my iPad in the morning before work, because I know it won't be done before I leave, so I plug it in once a week and it takes half of the weekend.

Next time I plug in to sync, I am going to disable my wifi network to see if this makes any difference. Anyone else having these issues - there is about 50 pages of this at the Apple Support Forums.

Apple - Support - Discussions - Very Slow iPad Backup/Sync ...

Check this out as well, which outlines the issue

http://peter.vdhamer.com/2010/08/15/...-backup-issue/

11-06-2010, 12:59 PM

Had my iPad since september and haven't seen this issue. My syncs normally take no more than 10 minutes.

I've a 32 gig one and have about 4 gigs of data on it.

I am using snow leopard and a new iMac.

11-06-2010, 04:59 PM

Originally Posted by clive12

Had my iPad since september and haven't seen this issue. My syncs normally take no more than 10 minutes.

I've a 32 gig one and have about 4 gigs of data on it.

I am using snow leopard and a new iMac.

What kind of data do you have on it? Do you subscribe to any newspapers or magazines? These are the offenders, not music and video.