Photos won't show up in camera role & forever backups. Please help!

Question

This has been going on for 3 months now and its really becoming a pain. The problem in itself is now a giant conundrum where I can't find a possible fix so here it goes!
It all started when I noticed that when I took a photo with the built in camera it would save it to the thumbnail but when you go to view it, it would not be in the camera role, though they all show up in iPhoto just fine . I understand that this is a problem had by many and its nothing new, and there are ways of fixing it but below is where the problem gets tricky.
As soon as I connect my iphone to the computer to sync the phone in order to find the BAD CACHE or whatever, The device goes into "backing up iPhone" mode (even after I've checked the manually manage music & video's box") This would be no problem if it would actually back something up but it dosen't. One time I actually left it alone to backup over night after it had already taken 4 hours of of my time sitting there watching the endless loading lines pass (it didn't even get to the part with the solid bar that shows progress) I checked it the next morning and it was still loading. After 13 hours for a single backup I called it quits and gave up. I've tried many times after hoping that it might fix itself, but each time it gets stuck in the "backing up" phase.
I know you can just restore it to factory settings for problems like this, but I can't, without losing all the stuff I've purchased that I can't sync to the computer because of the backup problem.
Can someone please walk me through a fix (where to look for the bad info caches or something) that dosen't include losing everything via a reset. I'm at my wits end with this problem and would really love if someone could help.
FYI, My phone is a 3GS and I have NOT updated, mostly because I can't. The software I believe is from the 3.0- 3.0-1 (I'm not sure which) It was the software that came with the phone that purchased back in August 09.
3GS

Answer 1

1) Turn off auto sync: go to itunes, Edit, Preferences, Devices, "Prevent syncing of...."
2) At the same place, youll see a list of all the backups. You can highlight and delete the ones you think are bad.
For the camera roll photos, you need to upload them from the iphone camera roll with iphoto (not a sync) as you would a digital camera, but turn off autossync first.
Once you have everything organized, you can try a restore and sync (in that order). But all your content must be on the itunes-equipped computer first.