Slow iPad backup

I have been battling this on and off for a few weeks now and yesterday, because I could not upgrade to iOS 3.2.2, I decided enough was enough and I better sort it out. The problem is that when the iPad is plugged into the PC it would start s backup before doing the sync. I know that the backup can be cancelled, by pressing the small x in the top display where it says backing up ipad, and this will continue with the sync, bit that wasn't the point I wanted to do the backup because otherwise I wasn't going to be able upgrade the ipad and whilst 3.2.2 is not that big a deal 4.2 is coming soon and that I want.

First of all i thought i would just leave it snd see if it would backup. However, after it had been running for 24 hours, I stopped it and stated to look into the problem in more detail. A few quick searches, Google Instant - nice, turned up surprisingly little. A number of people were having the problem, and most of the suggestions related to people having too many applications on the iPad. However, I knew thus was not the problem as which ever way you cut it 64gb doesn't take 24 hours to back up over USB 2.0. Reading on it seemed that it was likely to be a rouge app that was causing the problem by corrupting some of the memory.

With this in mind I turned off syncing of applications. This removed all the apps, except the default Apple ones, from the iPad. I then rebooted, press and hold the on/off for a couple of seconds and slide the power off button, then press the on/off again to start it. On plugging it back into the PC the backup started and, again, still moved very very slowly through the backup status indicator. Nothing for it then, I went for the full restore to factory settings.

In doing this the 3.2.2 upgrade was also done, at least one job was out of the way. Checking the backup now, running in just a few seconds. Now to restore apps and see if I could find the culprit. Installing a few apps at a time and then backing up everything was gone, backup performing well. No problems. After the apps I moved onto music, then videos, podcasts and finally books, backing up at each stage.