Dustin.LindenSmith

Q: iTunes continues to display 5+GB of photo data usage after all photos have been deleted

Hello there,

 

I've had no luck finding this particular issue online; I don't know if I'm describing it clearly.

 

I have an old 16GB iPad (2nd gen I think?) that says I'm holding nearly 6 GB of photos on it when I sync with iTunes, and yet I've imported and deleted all of the photos on the device. There isn't a single photo in the Camera Roll at all anymore.

 

My wife has had similar problems with her iPhone; after importing and deleting photos, it seems like iTunes isn't correctly resetting the amount of data that's actually taken up by photos anymore.

 

Does this problem make any sense as I've described it? Short of restoring the iPad altogether, which I really don't want to do, is anyone here aware of how to get iTunes to report this usage correctly? This error is tying up more than one-third of my iPad's storage capacity!

 

With thanks,

Dustin.

 

Mac OS 10.9.3

iOS 7.0.2

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)

Posted on Sep 30, 2014 11:37 AM

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Q: iTunes continues to display 5+GB of photo data usage after all photos have been deleted

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  • by anamoo321,

    anamoo321 anamoo321 Apr 22, 2015 11:33 PM in response to scabthepoet
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 22, 2015 11:33 PM in response to scabthepoet

    THANK YOU!!!  I've never logged into this, but wanted to say thank you.  This fixed my problem.  I was searching and searching and couldn't find how to fix this.  I set my date back, and voila 1200+ photos that I was searching for! They were on itunes, but nowhere to be found on my phone.  I did everything possible that I could, but nothing worked.  Scabthepoet you helped me out! Thank you very much

  • by Craig Williams4,

    Craig Williams4 Craig Williams4 Apr 24, 2015 10:46 AM in response to Rauf107
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Apr 24, 2015 10:46 AM in response to Rauf107

    THANK YOU!!!  But what in the world made you think to change the date on your phone???

  • by BadBrad09,

    BadBrad09 BadBrad09 May 2, 2015 10:13 AM in response to scabthepoet
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 2, 2015 10:13 AM in response to scabthepoet

    I show a 4 GB discrepancy between photo usage reported in iTunes and photo usage reported on my iPhone 5S.  The iPhone 5S claims ~6 GB while itunes shows ~ 4GB.   I tried the date approach above except I did not delete all the visible photos on the phone first.  I did not want to get rid of the photos in my camera roll before trying to reclaim this space. 

     

    I manually set the date back month by month for about 2 years before I gave up since I never saw the phantom photos show up in the recently delete album.

     

    Do you know if deleting all photos off the phone first is a requirement for this trick to work?  Is there another approach to this problem?

  • by siobhan.w,

    siobhan.w siobhan.w Jun 19, 2015 10:55 AM in response to scabthepoet
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jun 19, 2015 10:55 AM in response to scabthepoet

    I have had the same problem and have tried these exact steps, however when I set my date back and the phantom photos appear, I select them but have no option to delete them. Any suggestions? Very annoying :/

  • by Pachanguero,

    Pachanguero Pachanguero Jul 3, 2015 1:56 PM in response to scabthepoet
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 3, 2015 1:56 PM in response to scabthepoet

    So weird, but this actually worked for me. That seems like quite a bug, unless I'm just missing something. Thanks for that fix!

  • by jp002f315,

    jp002f315 jp002f315 Jul 12, 2015 9:24 PM in response to Delboy 1940
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 12, 2015 9:24 PM in response to Delboy 1940

    Any update, Delboy?  I'm in the same boat as BadBrad09.  I have a bloat of "Photos" and "Documents & Data" showing in iTunes that I can't fix by all the tricks found in the forums.

     

    I wonder - could it have anything to do with how we are deleting our photos in the first place? I often use Windows 7 to delete photos, by simply navigating Windows Explorer to my iPhone "Internal Storage" "DCIM" folders like I might do with a digital camera (remember those, Ha!)  From there I would copy the pics from the iPhone folder to a folder on my computer.  Sometimes I would select the "move" option and sometimes I would use Windows Explorere to delete the DCIM sub-folder from iPhone after copying it.  This might explain why nothing is showing up in "Recently Deleted" since they were never deleted from within iPhone.  I don't have a solution, but maybe if we can find common ground on the causes and symptoms, we can get somewhere.

     

    Here are my vitals:

    iPhone 4S purchased Jan 2013

    In iTunes:

    • Photos - 1.92 GB with 2094 photos
    • Documents & Data - 5.4 GB
    • Other - 3.22 GB

    (I realize that much of my Documents and Data and/or Other are text/pix messages that I don't want to delete)

    On iPhone:

    • Photos & Camera - 5.0 GB nearly all from Photo Library (a few MB from iTunes Library and Photo Stream)
    • Camera Roll claims to have 1096 and all the other folders are claiming a total of 95 other photos and videos
    • Messages - 4.3 GB

     

    I tried setting the date back in time, no luck.  I tried turning iCloud Photos on and off and on and off...  That freed up 1.0 GB initially when it deleted my photo stream, but nothing since.

  • by Hogboy,

    Hogboy Hogboy Jul 22, 2015 11:40 AM in response to Dustin.LindenSmith
    Level 1 (14 points)
    iTunes
    Jul 22, 2015 11:40 AM in response to Dustin.LindenSmith

    I think the problem is iCloud.  http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-switch-off-icloud-photos-2014-9

     

    Here's how I finally got rid of 5,000 photos on my iPad.  I won't go into great detail because iTunes seems to change every week and iCloud remains a complete mystery to me.

     

    1. Turn off everything to do with iCloud on your device.

     

    2. Do the same on your Mac.

     

    3. Open iTunes and select your device.  Click on "Photos" and then go to the synch screen.  Ask it to sync but only pick 1 photo - then click sync.

     

    4. Boom, everything disappears from your device (I had to shut down and then reopen my iPad.

     

    HEY APPLE - how about a big device button that says "DELETE LOTS OF STUFF AT ONCE"?

  • by specialt860,

    specialt860 specialt860 Jul 28, 2015 9:10 AM in response to scabthepoet
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 28, 2015 9:10 AM in response to scabthepoet

    This worked like a charm!

     

    Thanks for your time and research...

  • by Gareth Amaya Price,

    Gareth Amaya Price Gareth Amaya Price Sep 4, 2015 4:37 AM in response to scabthepoet
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 4, 2015 4:37 AM in response to scabthepoet

    This was super helpful.

     

    I found a variation on your solution:  the deleted photos in the trash can have a "will automatically be deleted in" date on them. 

    I reset the time and date forward, past that date, and then went back and looked in the trash photos and they were all gone.

    Then I put the time and date back to auto.

  • by rocion,

    rocion rocion Sep 7, 2015 6:17 PM in response to txforever
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 7, 2015 6:17 PM in response to txforever

    Thank you! txforever.  Who knew that all of my storage was being taken up by my "Recently deleted" pictures! This worked right away.

  • by skaiwoka,

    skaiwoka skaiwoka Sep 18, 2015 10:15 PM in response to Dustin.LindenSmith
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 18, 2015 10:15 PM in response to Dustin.LindenSmith

    I have found a workaround that worked good and there is no need to change date to OS X or iOS.

    Basically you have to extract ghost photos, upload them again to Photos iCloud and then delete them permanently. It works, I have just tried.

     

    in OS X

    1) In Finder, go to Images and right-click to Photos Library, select "show package contents".
    2) Now you are inside Photos, select Masters folder, search all JPG file inside it and copy ALL of them to Desktop. Close Finder.

    3) Open Photos and import all previous photos. Photos will start to import and upload them to iCloud

    4) When it ends, delete all photos. Go to Photos menu -> File -> Show recently deleted.
    5) Delete them

     

    Magically your ghost space will be 0 gb for photos

     

    enjoy my workaround

  • by Lu Kelly,

    Lu Kelly Lu Kelly Sep 28, 2015 8:20 PM in response to scabthepoet
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 28, 2015 8:20 PM in response to scabthepoet

    Thank you.  This helped me free up 27GB on my iPad.

  • by jrc*,

    jrc* jrc* Sep 30, 2015 9:15 AM in response to Dustin.LindenSmith
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 30, 2015 9:15 AM in response to Dustin.LindenSmith

    You might also check Messages app, where photo attachments can be hiding. For each thread, tap Details, scroll down to the attachments, long tap (tap-and-hold) one of them, tap More… in the edit menu, then you can choose photos and delete them.

  • by Inteye,

    Inteye Inteye Nov 6, 2015 11:07 AM in response to scabthepoet
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 6, 2015 11:07 AM in response to scabthepoet

    Thank you so SO SOOOOO MUCH! You have resolved an issue I have been searching for eons!

  • by liamfromnyc,

    liamfromnyc liamfromnyc Nov 10, 2015 11:30 AM in response to scabthepoet
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 10, 2015 11:30 AM in response to scabthepoet

    Genius!  Thank you!

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