iOS 5 Upgrade is Taking Forever

111013 ios5update ipad

I’ve been staring at this for quite awhile. So far here are the things I’ve tried to do to upgrade my iPad 2 to the latest iOS system (which as of this writing, is iOS 5)…I have:

  1. Backed up the iPad inside of iTunes. I've done this twice. Once before upgrading iTunes to 10.5 and again this morning after upgrading iTunes to 10.5.
  2. Deleted the iPad backup from the Finder and then performed a sync inside of iTunes 10.5. This did not backup the iPad as a normal sync would.
  3. Resigned self to letting the damn software do its thing while I work on other stuff. Which I'm having difficulty doing because I really want to see if I should upgrade my iPhone to iOS 5, but due to the mission critical nature of my phone, I'm not touching with any form of upgrade until I can assess potential drawbacks, etc.

While typing the above, after about 30 minutes (I got interrupted mid-post; it didn’t take 30 minutes to type the above), the “backup” took and iTunes now reports that it has restored the iPad software and is “Verifying iPad restore…”.

How has your upgrade process gone? Or are you holding off?

UPDATE: Restore is now taking forever. This is all so First World Problem.

  • shauna ehninger

    It took all night but I was finally successful! <3 iOS 5 thus far…

  • Anonymous

    I downloaded the ipsw while still at work, and tried to do a restore with it once I got home for lunch. Got an incompatible hardware error. Downloaded it again at home, first two attempts to update failed with error 3200. Rebooted computer, install went ahead. Saw several “installing XX” then “verifying XX” status bars, along with 2 or 3 phone restarts (wasn’t paying attention at this point, since I was an hour into it).

    The phone came back up, and even started receiving txts, but iTunes showed “restoring apps” and seemed to get ‘stuck’ there for 15 mins. I checked the phone, and it prompted me to set up iCloud (which I had already done on the iMac while waiting for the phone), so I went through all of that thinking that’s what iTunes was waiting for. Although the apps icons were all there, they didn’t open anything. It wasn’t, so I unplugged the phone (I couldn’t ‘Stop’ the app restore) which naturally generated an error in iTunes. I restarted iTunes and plugged the phone back in, and it immediately asked if I wanted to resume the interrupted restore. When I clicked yes, it started ’”restoring music and videos”, which I watched for 20+ mins and then had to get back to work.

    I came back to check on it 45 mins later (I live across the street from my office) and it was done. Total time I estimate to be 2 hrs. My daughter spent 3 hrs on hers, but she hadn’t upgraded to iTunes 10.5 on the first few attempts. It let her start the upgrade with the wrong version, which I found fairly dumb, wiping her phone and then generating 3200 errors. If 10.5 is required, why not check for it before wiping and trying an install that’s doomed to failure?

  • Tish Merritt

    Oh great! I haven’t upgraded my iPad2 yet…just my phone. At least now I know what to expect. My phone took FOREVER!

  • http://twitter.com/mundanemusings Rebekah Sanders

    Took almost 2 hours, but was well worth it. I ended up having to restore to factory settings after backing up my iPhone (but didn’t with my husbands phone) to get it to install, but indeed it did. I love iOS5.

    I had the same issue with the restoring apps and music. TOOK FOREVER. Although I could use my phone while it was doing that as long as it was plugged into my computer. It seemed weird to me, but apparently was that way for everyone.

    I’ve had ZERO issues thus far on my iPhone and I’ve had it for nearly 24 hours now.

  • http://blurbomat.com blurb

    Thanks for sharing, everybody. I’m still elbow-deep in the configuration screens, but so far, looking good. Still wary to do my phone due to all the photos/videos I’ve got there. Probably gonna do a big sync/backup and then do the upgrade later tonight when I don’t need my phone.

  • http://blurbomat.com blurb

    Has anybody done a wireless sync with a computer yet?

    • Tish Merritt

      Not yet, but I’m excited!!!

    • shauna ehninger

      No the button is always greyed out and it says my computer isn’t available. When clearly it is… let us know if you figure that one out. :o )

  • Anonymous

    My recommendation would be to simply avoid the upgrade and buy a 4s.  :)

  • http://twitter.com/lesliedotcom lesliedotcom

    iPhone took ~1:30 including the iOS5 download.

    iPad2  upgrade crashed repeatedly after the download.  Waited until this morning, restarted my laptop (one of the hints when following the “OMG what do I do now?!? message) and all went well, taking ~1:15  Only wonkiness was that my apps didn’t restore, had to do another sync to get them back.

    One thing– iTunes was acting like it was stalled completely (even got the red Not Responding message in Force Quit box) but I waited it out and it straightened itself out.  Weird.

    Can’t complain overall.

  • Anonymous

    So far iPad, iPhone, and 2 MBP’s have all gone fine. One iPhone left to do. She’s not home from work yet…

    No issues syncing from MacBooks. I Cloud Password took two tries at one point even though I know it was correct.

    Did most of it during a sleepless night (spicy calamari) at ~2:30 AM EST.

  • Grant Fletcher

    I’m updating my iPad2 — it has been backing-up for 6+ hours although it has less than 1Gb stored on the device.  Tried to do the update last evening but I had to kill it after an hour.  As you all know, no meaningful status message shown on the host computer.  Minimal disk activity.  If “another” technology company’s update did this all hell would be breaking out.  But, Apple is special.

    • http://blurbomat.com blurb

      Have you stopped the backup and tried to start over? I had to do that for my iPad.

  • Anonymous

    Started the iO5 upgrade on my iPhone 4 @ 11 am this morning…walked away from computer & when I came back it was saying “restoring iphone from backup. The green progress bar hasn’t moved at all, and the remaining time keeps changing…it’s now saying remaining time is 12 hours. Is this normal??

  • http://blurbomat.com blurb

    Not normal. Since you have the phone backed up, you should be able to stop the upgrade process and then start it over.

    • Anonymous

      There is no “stop restore” button, and I can’t click anywhere on iTunes. How can I stop the upgrade & start over? Thanks.

  • http://blurbomat.com blurb

    @katrich, Just unplug your phone from the computer.

    • Anonymous

      The phone says “restore in progress”, if I unplug it from the computer, is it going to harm the phone??

      • http://blurbomat.com blurb

        It shouldn’t harm your phone. However I would be careful. What does your phone say?

        If it’s at the restoring stage, that should take an hour, tops.