Backing up with iOS 4 on a iPod Touch 2G

Question

I had to Restore the iPod Touch to get the iOS 4 onto it. This took forever (nearly 12 hours). I played around with the Folders and rearranged the nearly 300 Apps. Then I tried to Sync it. Well...it tried and tried, but eventually the screen on the iPod Touch would go blank, then I got a wheel in the middle the screen...then I got the APPLE symbol. The Backup seems to stop about 1/4 of the way (from looking on the progress bar on iTunes. The iPod Touch then sits with the APPLE symbol for a long time...in fact the APPLE symbol is on iTunes also. In iTunes, it drops the iPod Touch totally off. I have tried this about 5 times. I have found (http://appletoolbox.com/2010/06/itunes-9-2-the-iphone-cannot-be-synced-a-duplica te-file-name-was-specified/ )that if you have iToner in your Plugins, you have to remove it and they say you have to stop the syncing of Notes. I did not have iToner (not my problem), but I did sync Notes. So, I untoggled the Note syncing, but this did not help. Eventually, the iPod Touch comes back to life, but it will not connect to iTunes. I have been messing with this for nearly 20 hours. HELP.
Now, as I am syncing the iPod Touch...Sync in Progress...it is making beeps and squeeks. This in NOT normal. Then it did the same thing as I explained above. PLEASE help me with this situation.
I have just tried, again, to backup. It got to about 20 % on the iTunes screen, but it had already dumped me out on the iPod Touch. I cannot get this to backup. HELP. It is now Syncing my Contacts, etc., but this is really getting annoying. It is taking forever.
It is now installing the new Applications (which is nice), but I want to have a secure Backup. When will this occur? I cannot keep this up for the rest of the day. I have things to do, important things. This is suppose to be a tool to be more productive...not these last two days, though. I hope someone comes on and tells me how to fix this. Or at least, APPLE coming out with an iTunes fix that will make this all go away. I am praying for either solution...whichever it is...please come soon.
Now it is Syncing "Fr. Ignatius' iPod". It says the iPod sync is complete. OK to disconnect.
I have looked in iTunes, the last Backup I had was at 9:37 AM, yesterday. It has not, as of yet, been able to backup on iOS 4. Please help me.
Message was edited by: Fr. Ignatius

Answer 1

I have a very old Powerbook, so everything tends to go pretty slow. This is how the update went for me:
Download update, 1.5Mb connection, took about 30 minutes.
iTunes warns I don't have enough disk space to back up my media (songs and vids), so I click the option to go ahead without backing up the media.
There might have been one or two other alerts I clicked through.
It then opened a small white window in the middle of the screen with a blue progress bar that said backing up my iPod.
This took about 4 hours.
Then the iPod screen turned black with a white Apple and a white progress bar, being the typical screen for when you restore or update the OS.
When that finished, it rebooted but it took a very long time, then it rebooted itself again. I got the lock screen and the animation of the Slide to Unlock shimmering was horribly choppy and slow. I tried to move around in Springboard and it was like a slideshow the framerate was so bad. I tried to open a few settings and things and it was so slow and unresponsive it was unusable. A blue error box came up complaining about one of my mail accounts. Suddenly the whole thing froze completely.
Then the screen went back and I got the white spinning "doing something" icon.
It spun for a very long time. At once point it stopped spinning and I thought it had locked up, but after a few minutes it resumed.
Finally it restarted itself and once it booted up iTunes took over again, and installed my apps which took a couple more hours, and then some of the things I had synced, such as podcasts.
Eventually it was all done and the iPod was usable, except for the WiFi being ruined and it no longer having enough memory to run many of my apps.
So, my recommendation to you is to tell it to update and once the Backing Up starts, just leave it alone for how long it takes. It seems to go through a whole series of bizarre things that give you a panic attack thinking your device is ruined. It also had that interim period where I started using it when I really shouldn't have. It sounds like you started doing the same thing I did as far as starting to try to use it before the process is complete and then you get the black screen with white spinner just like when you shut an iPod or iPhone down.
Good luck!