iPhone Backups Slow? How to Speed Up and Fix a Slow iPhone Backup
Troubleshooting, iPhone - June 21st, 2010 - 31 Comments
There are several reasons why backups can take forever on an iPhone, so here are a few tips you can try that should increase the speed of your iPhone backups and restores. Yes, these tips work on Mac OS and Windows, and for iPod Touch too.
Fix slow iPhone backups by deleting photos
If you have a large camera roll on your iPhone, you might be really slowing down your iPhone backups. This is because the iPhone backup process will copy all your pictures regardless of whether or not there have been any changes made to them. The solution? Regularly backup your iPhone photo’s and then delete the originals from the iPhone.
- Launch iPhoto (or Image Capture or whatever app you use to backup photos)
- Copy ALL images from your iPhone to your computer
- Ensure that you have backed up all your iPhone photos to the computer
- Delete ALL of the originals from the iPhone / iPod Touch
- Proceed to backup as usual through iTunes
Your backups should now go much faster. It is no coincidence that this tip is recommended by Apple Support, because it works.
I’ll be the first to admit that I was skeptical of this solution until I tried it myself; I had 1,728 photos saved in my iPhone camera roll. After I backed them all up into iPhoto and deleted all the originals from the phone, my iPhone backups speed improved dramatically – I went from a painfully slow four hour backup process to a more reasonable 45 minutes with this tip alone.
Delete old and unused apps from your iPhone
If you aren’t using an old app anymore, delete it, there’s not much reason to keep it around on your iPhone anymore. Deleting these ancient apps can help to speed up your iPhone backups too, since there is less data to transfer at each backup or restore.
Remove unused media from the iPhone
Old apps aren’t the only thing that can slow down backups, so can media. We already discussed deleting photos from your iPhone and the big improvement that makes in backup speed, but deleting other media can help too. If you find yourself never listening to some ancient albums, or watching those old TV shows you copied over 8 months ago, just go ahead and delete them from the iPhone. Deleting video files seems to be particularly effective.
Regularly backup your iPhone
Allowing too much time to pass between backups can really increase the amount of time necessary to backup your iPhone. Try to keep regular backups of your iPhone, just get in a habit of making one full backup once or twice a month. I have noticed a direct correlation between the length of time a backup takes to complete and how often I perform full backups: the longer time that passes between backups the slower the backup will be.
I’m trying to install iPhone OS 4 and the backup and install is really slow, help!
Many users are reporting very slow backup and install processes for updating their iPhone and iPod touch to iPhone OS 4. If you are experiencing this problem, I would highly recommend letting the backup and install run during a time you will not be using the phone for several hours, ideally overnight. Just start the iPhone OS 4.0 install and backup process and let it run while you sleep, you will wake up to the new OS4 being installed and you will have made a recent backup, which will speed up future backups and installations as well.
My iPhone backups are still extremely slow, help!
If you’ve tried all these methods and your iPhone backups are still extremely slow (and by extremely slow I mean well over a few hours, I’ve heard reports of up to 9 hours… yikes!) then you can try the last resort: Restore your iPhone to it’s original factory settings. Remember that by doing this without a backup you will LOSE ALL DATA ON YOUR IPHONE including all media, music, apps, phone numbers, notes, everything, so be absolutely certain that you don’t mind restoring to factory default settings without a backup. This almost always resolves the slow backup problem, but if you don’t have anything to restore to then you will have a completely blank iPhone with nothing on it. There are some suggestions that restoring the iPhone is necessary when there has been a filesystem corruption, which can lead to extremely slow backup speeds and other strange behavior. Again, you will lose all your iPhone data so this is a last resort.
[...] echt mijn vriend. Met de juiste keywords is een oplossing snel gevonden. In dit geval vond ik op OS X Daily een blog post over het verkorten van de backup tijd en ook Apple Support bleek een waardevolle [...]
I just went through this today when installing iPhone OS 4.0 since the install has to backup the iPhone first. Removing pictures and videos helped speed up the update a lot, so thank you.
Total time was about two hour for OS 4 update.
Well over 9 hours, last time I backed up my iPhone it took over 15 hours. I really should switch to Android.
I left my phone on overnight as they suggested. After 10 hours, I was only about 20% backed up on my 3G trying to load the new OS4.0. Totally unacceptable.
I have had to uninstall and reinstall itunes because of a corrupt file in mobile me. And then download OS4 and install again. Painstaking!!
I have left my phone do its backup for about 20 hours and it is only about 3/4 way through. No way i can let this go any longer, its my work phone!
I have left my phone for backup overnight. After about 9 hrs, the green bar barely moved. .. Give up for now, until a better solution is worked out
I left my iphone updating all night. I read to unsync the apps to remove them all, and if any remained they were corrupt to delete them so I did. none remained and it took me forever to get them back on, the phone still wouldnt back up and i had to cancel the backup process just to be able to sync and put the apps back on my phone. When I do try to manually backup I never even get a progress bar, its always the diagonal lines in the progress bar like when itunes is connecting. So then I read maybe my old backup file is corrupted, so I deleted it, and my phone still wont back up. Apple should really fix the problems with backups or offer some easy to get to free tech support
Same thing here… 10 hours to get to 3/4 of the back up and then completely frozen… Not even a fraction of a mil on the progress bar in the next 2 hours… My 1st and last Apple product… Which I m unfortunately stuck with for another 18 months…fix your crap before releasing new product Mr Job…
I gave up trying to upgrade my 3G to os4 after several aborted attempts to back up data. Spending 4 hours at a time waiting for the back up progress bar to move 1/10th of an inch to the right is not what I consider user friendly.
I’ve spent the past week researching the Droid X as a replacement for my 3G. I was going to purchase the new 4G but now I’ll wait until July 15th before making my decision.
Apple, take better care of your customers!
Have to agree with Ted. Apple deliver continual disappointment via their cranky servers/locked-in mentality. Bad experiences with iPhone 3g and, separately, with mobileme so far. Considering the jump to Android phones. Google works.
After 3 hours, it looks like my son’s iPod touch is about 85% of the way backed up – a long tedious process in order to get OS4 (which I hope will behave better than this!). He has a lot of applications that were downloaded directly onto the iPod rather than through iTunes, so it sounds like this is the main culprit. It would have been nice to have been notified by Apple of this bug in one of their many marketing emails! Apple, respect your customers’ valuable time by sharing whatever information you have that can benefit them!
It’s rediculous… Im on my 4th attempt at trying to get it to back up. I left it for 5 hours this morning and it only had 2 bars. Then I gave up… I can’t be without my phone for hours and hours.
I remember last time it took a fair while… but considering before updating it said it would take about 1 hours… this is so unbelievably annoying. A real fail on apples behalf considering so many people are having this problem. I first typed it into google last night to see if there was anyway of getting it to work or speeding it up, and I was extremely shocked to see the thousands of other people all complaining of the same problem.
I to have downloaded most of my apps straight onto my iphone and not through itunes… so could unstand that this may be the problem… I also hadnt backed my phone up for a while… but apple should have considered this when making the software available. Crap absolutely Crap
I back up my 3g every day – and let the update run for 5 hours, but it still was only about 5% along.
It’s ridiculously slow. I wonder why apple doesn’t have a fix.
Same thing on mine. Two separate, long, annoying backup/OS upgrade attempts. Won’t try again ’til Apple fixes it!
9 hours? I let my phone backup for 12 hours and it wasn’t even 1/2 way done with the backup.
OH MY — have tried numerous times! Over night, during the day and nothing. This is ridiculous!!! My phone only took about 1 hr to backup/upgrade to OS 4. However I’ve been trying to backup/upgrade my husbands for a week now and NOTHING. It really shouldn’t take that long to back things up. I’ve also tried EVERY suggestion you have listen above and nothing has worked. Any think else?
removed all apps (after i synced them) left the photos on there, deleted text messages, and phone backed up in 4 minutes….after the new software installs i will then sync my apps back on……LUCKY ME…HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE
YOU ALL SHOULD TRY THE VERY SAME THING 
same thing here. have tried several times for several hours and only got 2 bars on the progress bar. i only have about 44 apps and 75 pics on my phone. it is practically empty and i still cant get it to backup even over night. this sucks!! i know some people with more things than me whose worked fine in an hour or two. its ridiculous and disapointing!!
I finally decided that it’s faster to reenter all my information by hand than to back it all up with Apple’s broken software. I disabled the backup a long time ago using iPhone Backup Switch (http://microseconds.com/?page_id=395) . I updated to iOS 4 without a backup (which is essentially a factory restore) and just reentered my contacts. Just make sure to get all your photos off first.
I use to plug in my Iphone 3gs on Friday night and it would still be backing up late Sunday. Obviously, things were not right.
My 3gs is 8gb and only had about 4.5gb on it.
I started with deleting all the pictures. That didn’t change anything.
I contacted Apple tech support, who suggested deleting all the apple software off by computer [vista], and then reinstalling it. They sent me a detailed instruction to follow. That didn’t change anything.
Then I read a blog that said if Iphone users had added apps from the app store app on the phone, as opposed to adding apps from ITunes, that may cause a problem. I had added all my new apps directly from the app store on the phone, so I tried that angle.
I downloaded all my apps from ITunes first. Then, I deleted all my added apps off my IPhone. Then, I tried a backup. Low and behold, the backup took 60 seconds. In the synch that followed the backup all of my former apps were installed.
Since that time I’ve always added apps from ITunes, not the app store on the phone. I’ve got tons of pictures. I’ve got more than 40 apps on my phone. Each backup takes about 60 seconds. Updating to v4 of the software took no time and all and the succeeding backups all work in 60 secs and I have no issues.
It worked like a charm. That did it.
SAME problems 10+ hours. I have not tried any of these solutions yet, but I will. I can’t understand why they would have an ap for downloading aps if the f-ing ap corrupts the phone! Apple is so user friendly my arse!
Amazing isn’t it?
At least now it works. I added a dozen songs and 2 apps last night and with the backup it took all of 3 minutes
Before i just wouldnt even see my bar move – i left it on for hours thought my itunes froze or something. But then after some snooping around i figured i have way too much stuff on my phone. This is what you should do -
sync all your photos to your computer or iphoto.
see what apps you have – if like me you dwnld em straight to your phone then either write em down, or sync em to itunes. if its takign too long, screw it. just write em down. delete all the music on your phone. you can always sync that up later anyhow. then when you have atleast 60-70% of your memory free on your phone, go for the update.
It only took me an hour or so after that. Compared to the days it wouldve taken otherwise.
[...] If you have any tips feel free to post them in the comments below. Otherwise all I have to offer is what I typed above and this link I found: here. [...]
I findit very ammusing how I am reading this and am waiting for my moms iPhone 3g to finish backing up. Not even half way there …this might take awhile , but i just dont understand my iPhone 4g workedout fine in just seconds why isher’s taking so long!!
i have a 3gs 16gb iphone and started the OS4 download from 9am and its STILL running (11.18PM)….What the hell is all this?
14HRS already!!!!
Over 20 hours for each attempt X 3… Do we really need to backup? what is the liklihood that we’ll lose data upon upgrade?
…to think, all of this for a bit of multi-tasking (that should have come as standard).
Im thinking Android is the way to go in future too :S