The iPad “youripadnamehere” cannot be synced. The required disk cannot be found.

My iPad2 (32 GB, WiFi & 3G) is configured to use “iTunes Wi-Fi Sync”.  For the past week, when I get up in the morning I can see on my PC a dialog with the message ‘The iPad “youripadnamehere” cannot be synced. The required disk cannot be found.“. Checking the iPad under Settings > General > iTunes Wi-Fi Sync  confirms that it hasn’t synced in over a week. Initiating a manual sync (pushing the “Sync now” button) yields the “cannot be synced” dialog on my PC.

A quick Google search indicates that this is a fairly common problem for iPhones and the solution seems largely to require you to change USB ports. But I could not see a solution for iPads.

It turns out that the issue arises because I do not recycle my PC regularly – under Windows 7 it simply does not need it anymore and it seems that iTunes becomes somewhat unstable after a few days of running continuously.

The solution? Simply stop iTunes and restart it. Clicking the “Sync Now” button on the iPad now works just fine.

Long term, to ensure that the iPad syncs regularly is presumably to recycle the iTunes app periodically. I’ll likely wait to see the error message again and use that as my cue to perform the recycle.