My iPod Touch takes a REALLY long time to sync. By long time I mean >6 HOURS! Most of that time is spent with the "backing up iPod" message and a very slow progress bar. Because of that I've turned off the sync on connect option and only do so when I have the time.

I also have an iPhone. It seems to sync in a perfectly reasonable time where I define reasonable as "less time than it takes to bring the charge up to full." I haven't actually timed it, though.

Snow Leopard 10.6.1, iTunes 9.0, Gen 1 Touch (MA623LL) 8 GB w/ 350 MB free, OS v3.1.1

It sounds as if you may be connecting with a USB 1.1 port and not USB 2 on your computer.

I have also had this problem when I tried to install the latest update on my 2nd generation 8Gb ipod touch. I tried it on 2 different computers and it was definitely on USB 2.0 ports and the backup was taking so long I left it to do the install overnight. All previous updates were fairly quick, less than 30 mins tops.

that's not a good sounding problem, I'd look into it. Since the data is backed up, try restoring it on another computer (wiped) and see if it syncs quickly.

It's possible there's a database on the ipod/itunes that it uses for syncing that needs to be reset somehow.

It's also possible there's a media problem on the ipod or your computer's hard drive.

I neglected to mention it's syncing to a Mac Pro -- no USB 1.1 ports on that. But even so, the disparity of sync time between the Touch and the iPhone is huge.

Hope everyone remembers auto backups were turned off by default in 3.0, u have to backup manually by right clicking on the device in iTunes.
U can check the date of the last backup by going to iTunes preferences,devices...Pete

Backups now back to normal.
I have a main computer which I store all my data a G5 iMac and a Hackintosh netbook. I backed up overnight onto the Hackintosh then did a restore on the iMac. selected "do not backup" and the restore took about 15 mins till the point at which it asks if you want to restore from a backup. the last backup was on the 17th June, which is when I install OS 3 onto the ipod so I did not restore.I put the ipod onto the Hackintosh and restored from the overnight backup, this put back data for emails but only the bare minimum programs and no music, so I discovered that the backup is only data and not media or program files. I then put the ipod back on the iMac and synced. Again the backup was taking a long while so i cancelled the backup and the sync continued and put my ipod back to how it was before I started, Phew!. Now thanks to Pete for the tip about forcing a backup, I backed up the ipod. it took 1 hour and 9 minutes, the progress bar only move about 1/4 of the way for the 1st hour and then finished in a 9 minute spurt. Now the good part, a backup now only takes about a minute. I kept changing a calendar on the ipod and syncing it with iCal, this caused a backup before the syncing.
Conclusions, well I think that Pete was right that OS 3 did not auto backup and so the backup was so out of date that there was a lot to backup which is why it took so long. Now the backup is up to date and it seems to autobackup before syncing, the backups are very quick.

Forgot to mention: The iMac is running Leopard 10.5.8 and iTunes 9.0.
The Hackintosh is running Leopard 10.5.7 and iTunes 9.0