A quick iTunes/iPhone question

Anyone know what could be causing my 8GB iPhone to take ~30 hours to backup before it syncs? My iPod syncs normally. This happened before the latest version of iTunes and also now that I'm on the latest version. It is a new problem that I have not had in the past with it. Any ideas? I'm running Vista 64.

I believe this has been discussed on Leo Laporte's MacBreak Weekly podcast in the past, but it was some time ago. That's all I remember, sorry.

I gather that it is to do with apps downloaded straight onto the phone. The backup seems to take an inordinate amount of time; 8 hours in my record. I have no idea what it is doing in that time; copying 16gb of data from my key drive doesn't take nearly that long. It must be building the backup that causes the delay, I suppose.

If you back up frequently, it is far faster, as I think that it only looks for changes to the stored backup. I gather that Stanza, if you have a big library, can be an issue with this, though the latest update claims to have improved the problem. Big programs like sat-nav are a pain as well.

The only advice that I could find last time that I looked into it was to remove all of your apps from the iPhone, and then reinstall them all from iTunes on the PC or Mac rather than through the iPhone itself.

This is, in my opinion, a really stupid issue that Apple should have prioritised repair on. One of the attractions of the iPhone is being able to install apps and other data on the fly; having to tie the device to a PC for these functions is a real pain.

I have not bothered trying the so-called "fix" thus far, but 30 hours...damn, it may be worth a try.

I'm not sure whether a factory reset of the phone AFTER a full backup is stored on the PC, and then restoring from that backup would fix it.

Let me know if you do find a better fix, please!

Is there a way to set how often it backs up the phone?

I've just had mine since Thursday, and it seems like it runs a back up nearly every time I sync the phone.

I just removed a ton of the shovelware I had on there. It synced up in around two hours. Kind of a PITA to remove all the apps before I sync. Oh well, I have not touched most of them in a long time.