Marie Kim

Q: ios 8 / iphone 5s - deleted photos, memory still appears occupied

To make more storage space on my iphone, I went through and deleted about 1,300 photos from my iphone.  They were in my "recently deleted" album for 30 days and then they disappeared.  So I expected to have more storage available on my iphone (maybe 10 GB more?).

 

But no, something is wrong.  Whenever I attach my phone to the laptop by USB, it still appears that I have thousands and many GBs of photos.

 

I have a 32 GB iphone 5s, and I have installed ios 8.1.2.  I back up my iphone to my laptop only.  I do not use iCloud or Photostream.  My laptop is running Windows 7.

 

I can't see the deleted photos anymore on my phone.  But I think they are still occupying the memory.  I received a warning that I was running out of storage.

 

To try to fix this, I did a back-up and then restored the phone tonight.  Three hours later, I have a little more storage available from removing "other" files.  But the photos still look like they occupy many GBs.

 

I'm at a loss.  Has anyone else experienced this?  Did your phones end up overwriting deleted photos when you needed more storage?  Or is there a fix?

iPhone 5s, iOS 8.1.2

Posted on Jan 14, 2015 11:12 PM

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Q: ios 8 / iphone 5s - deleted photos, memory still appears occupied

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  • by nupur171,

    nupur171 nupur171 Jun 17, 2015 5:22 AM in response to Ethan7988
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 17, 2015 5:22 AM in response to Ethan7988

    Thank you!!!! This was exactly the solution that worked for me - without any purchase/phone reset etc.

     

    - Nupur

  • by siobhan.w,

    siobhan.w siobhan.w Jun 19, 2015 11:06 AM in response to selenafromshenzhen
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 19, 2015 11:06 AM in response to selenafromshenzhen

    Hi,

     

    I have this issue, but cannot find my ''recently deleted'' folder? It's not in my photos as an album. Help!

  • by Phillip Curtis,

    Phillip Curtis Phillip Curtis Jun 25, 2015 8:31 PM in response to SG Yoyo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 25, 2015 8:31 PM in response to SG Yoyo

    SG, I'm not sure why you thought to try this but it TOTALLY worked.  Such a stupid glitch that I cannot for the life of me figure out what is going on...but this fix worked.  perfectly.  thanks!

  • by Molly1983,

    Molly1983 Molly1983 Jun 30, 2015 10:29 PM in response to Mm623308
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 30, 2015 10:29 PM in response to Mm623308

    This was very helpful, thanks! Great tool iFunbox!

  • by vinayakdshenoy,

    vinayakdshenoy vinayakdshenoy Jul 5, 2015 7:17 PM in response to Scottbelle
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 5, 2015 7:17 PM in response to Scottbelle

    This totally works! :-)

     

    I reduced my "Other" allocation from nearly 10GB on my iPhone 5S 64GB running iOSv8.4 to 570.7MB.

     

    So this is what happened:

    - Apple introduced Photos requiring us to dump the previous app.: iPhoto.

    - However, Apple still has an asymmetric Mac<->iPhone sync. system. It uses Photos to sync. photos and videos from iPhone to Mac but uses iTunes to sync. from Mac to iPhone.

    - This caused multiple entries for the same image/video to get stored on my iPhone.

     

    What was required was a file browser like iFunBox. I saw 4 copies of my entire photo/video collection stored on my iPhone (as Camera1, 2 and 3 apart from the original database synced. by iTunes back into the phone!)

     

    So following instructions:

    - I installed iFunBox and browsed to my iPhone

    - Deleted ALL my photos (listed under headings Camera1, Camera2 and Camera3.)

    - There was no harm in doing the above as I ALWAYS backup all my Photos/Videos using the Photos app.

    - Once deleted all my photos, "Other" dropped to ~ .5GB

    - Then, used iTunes to get a copy of my photos back from my library on the Mac.

     

    Hope the detailed explanations helps understand what is going on here!!!

     

    Regards,

    Vinayak

  • by Bam Jah,

    Bam Jah Bam Jah Jul 7, 2015 1:49 PM in response to Mm623308
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 7, 2015 1:49 PM in response to Mm623308

    this is the only simple and good solution! big up!

  • by annapeach,

    annapeach annapeach Jul 26, 2015 6:59 PM in response to SG Yoyo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 26, 2015 6:59 PM in response to SG Yoyo

    Changing the date in the Settings worked for me too! Thank you!

     

    (My iCloud photos are still counted in the Used Storage displayed in iTunes.)

  • by blutoX,

    blutoX blutoX Aug 15, 2015 5:16 PM in response to Marie Kim
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 15, 2015 5:16 PM in response to Marie Kim

    IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THE LONG STORY, HERE IT IS IN A NUTSHELL: Get "iFunBox" (or some other file management app) and look for any hidden files on your iPhone. Then DELETE them!

    I have been having a the same/similar problem since updating to ios8 (whenever it was when it first came out) to my 4s. I kept getting messages that the storage was full when i knew **** well that it wasn't! Also the phone would say one amount was free, iTunes would say another amount… nothing ever matched up. When looking under "manage storage" on the phone, just flipping back and forth from each app's info to "storage" would make the "available" amount go down (not a lot, but it kept filling up!). Music would show up in the "on my device/music" that i never loaded or downloaded from my library. When i deleted them they always came back but showed up as zero k. This always started when i turned the phone on to show all my music and turned on the iCloud library. The only thing that seemed to clear all this extra storage was to reset it and restore from back-up. Very time consuming and ineffective as within a few days it would start with the storage full messages again. The other day i read someone had used an app on the mac called "iFunBox" to find hidden files in their phone and delete them. i downloaded the app (free!) and found that i had hidden files too. A LOT OF HIDDEN FILES! In the phone under the "Raw File System" i found a folder named "Cloud Assets" that contained a little over 440mb of mp3 & m4a files, and accompanying plist files. I don't keep any music on the phone anymore, i stream everything from iCloud. It seems these were made from music i had recently listened to. The names were all altered. I copied them to my iMac so I could open & inspect what they were. Their names looked liked this:

    CloudAssets/persistentid-4023831224729247364-HQ.mp3

    CloudAssets/persistentid-4023831224729247726-LWHQ.plist

    CloudAssets/persistentid-4023831224729249236-LWHQ.m4a

    There was no way to play them from the phone, so i deleted them all and freed up a lot of space. BUT… as soon as i began streaming music again, a whole new batch showed up. Deleted them. Streamed. More files! This has been going on for the last 3 days. So big question is WHY DOES IT KEEP DOWNLOADING/GENERATING THESE FILES! (Apple??? What is going on here)

    PS- i have just found a lot of weird cache files of iTunes artwork. Over a 1.5GB's worth of album and video artwork that i can find no logical reason for being on the phone (as their is no corresponding music or video on the phone either). Gonna delete them too!

    - iPhone 4S iOS8.4.1 (but most of this took place with earlier versions) capacity: 5.34GB

  • by k-squared9,

    k-squared9 k-squared9 Aug 19, 2015 7:51 PM in response to Marie Kim
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 19, 2015 7:51 PM in response to Marie Kim

    I found this, and it totally worked!  I easily removed 2.6 GB of phantom photo data from my iPhone. Follow these instructions, it is the only solution I've found that works without additional apps to install, etc.

     

    enjoy!

    kk

     

    Reply  Helpfulby SEOmama on Apr 5, 2015 9:30 PM

    FIXED! I found the details on how to change the date on the phone in another thread. I did that, checked Photos/Recently Deleted - there were my thousand plus phantom photos. I deleted them, changed the date/time toggle back to "Set Automatically" and my Photo Storage went from 2.53 GB to 272 MB! A solution at last! I posted the response that details how to change Date/Time below. Thanks TxtForever for mentioning the solution in this thread or I may have never figured this out!:

     

    "Reply  Helpfulby scabthepoet on Mar 15, 2015 2:15 PM

    I was having the same issue on my iPhone. I have an iPad, too, that is doing the same thing (as is my wife's iPhone). Here is what works and what I posted a few minutes ago in the iPhone Apple Support Forum.

     

    I've been searching for an answer to this very problem for a solid day. Here is what I did that worked for me. No reset. No need to upgrade to more Cloud storage or anything else. I had already deleted out every picture from my phone, including "Messages" and the "recently deleted" album, etc. There really are phantom pictures in there, but the only way to see them and delete them is to:

     

    1. Go to Settings
    2. Date & Time
    3. Untoggle "Set Automatically"
    4. Manually change the date back. For example, if today is March 15, 2015, choose August 1, 2014. (You can change it back once we're done)
    5. Close out of that
    6. Open "Photos"
    7. Select "Albums"
    8. If, like me, you had already cleared out everything from the Camera Roll and "Recently Deleted" folder, you'll smile to see that your "Recently Deleted" folder now has thousands of images back. Those are your phantom photos
    9. Open it, "Select" and start deleting
    10. Now, go back into Settings - General - Usage - Storage - Manage Storage - and you'll notice your Photo & Camera is empty if you deleted everything

     

    I hope this works for everyone and that I saved you all the time I wasted searching for an answer myself -- only to never find one. Now you have the answer.

     

    I went from barely having any room left on my phone to almost brand new again.

     

    Take care."

  • by TobbeToss,

    TobbeToss TobbeToss Aug 31, 2015 12:23 AM in response to Cabakon
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 31, 2015 12:23 AM in response to Cabakon

    Thanks!

     

    Info to others with same problem

    I used ImageCapture to delete loads of movies from my iPhone. Guess that was the problem, should have deleted them direct in the phone instead.

     

    I turned off backup of my photo library and turned on iCloud photo, that way I didn't have to buy more storage. When the "lost space" was found I could turn off iCloud photo and turn on backup again.

  • by cpragman,

    cpragman cpragman Sep 12, 2015 7:33 AM in response to Marie Kim
    Level 2 (464 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Sep 12, 2015 7:33 AM in response to Marie Kim

    This is a bug introduced in iOS 8.0, and as of the latest iOS 8.4.1, is still not fixed.  No special software required to fix it though, and no need to sign up for iCloud photo library either.

     

    First, import all of your photos form your device into the Mac Photos app.  Quit Photos on the mac.

    On your mac, launch "Image Capture".  It will display all the photos on your phone.  Highlight ALL the photos on your phone, and click Delete.

    Wait for delete to finish.

     

    You are done.

  • by deekuiper,

    deekuiper deekuiper Sep 12, 2015 9:14 AM in response to SG Yoyo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 12, 2015 9:14 AM in response to SG Yoyo

    I need to retrieve perm deleted photos from yesterday. How can I get those back? Would restoring to a day or 2 before get them back?

  • by mfc90125,

    mfc90125 mfc90125 Sep 12, 2015 10:12 PM in response to cpragman
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 12, 2015 10:12 PM in response to cpragman

    Hi, tried this with no success. Went all the way back to 2003 I am wary of installing third party software on my computer to solve this problem. Anyone else still having the same trouble?

  • by Hokr,

    Hokr Hokr Sep 18, 2015 8:26 AM in response to mfc90125
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 18, 2015 8:26 AM in response to mfc90125

    I am still suffering with the issue. Even with iOS 9.0. I tried to restore the phone to clean state today - set as an new iPhone.

    Than I backed the phone and started to sync my pictures from Photos app. Other bar in iTunes  immediately grow to about the same size of the Photos I synced. Disabling photo sync cleared the other back to "normal".

     

    I tried setting the date back method - no luck

    Unfortunately I am unable to find any suspect files using the iFunBox

  • by cpragman,

    cpragman cpragman Sep 18, 2015 9:34 AM in response to Hokr
    Level 2 (464 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Sep 18, 2015 9:34 AM in response to Hokr

    Try launching Image Capture on your Mac. I've had success selecting all photos via Image Capture and deleting them that way.

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