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Storage almost full even after hard reset and no restore from icloud backup

IPhone 6s, 32GB, with ios 14.3. icloud storage is only 5GB.

phone had plenty of space left (over 10GB). this past week, started to get message that storage was almost full. checked the storage and it's at 30gb. The Other storage was at 23GB when it shouldn't be more than 10GB.

Hard reset and restore from icloud backup: photos couldn't be restored because the phone again reach its limit. Manually counted up the apps to be about 1GB, system storage was at 7gb and Other storage was at zero. Where is the rest of the 23gb?

Hard reset and no restore from icloud - just logged into the apple id which would restore only contacts, photos, and messages. that's only about 1GB. system storage was 7gb. strange, even before the restore was done, the Other storage shot up to 23GB.

I plugged the phone into the computer and itunes shows that the phone has 22GB of FREE space. Apple tech said that something is wrong with the phone as it's not showing the storage correctly. this has been sent to the engineers to investigate.

Has anyone ever encountered where the storage info on the phone is incorrect? How do you fix this without getting a new phone?

Thank you.

iPhone 6s

Posted on Jan 13, 2021 4:07 PM

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wolvey1 Author

Level 1

8 points

Posted on Jan 18, 2021 3:03 PM

I didn’t realize factory reset is totally different from erase all data on the phone. I finally did that and it cleared up the Other storage.

it only took a week and a second Apple senior advisor to tell me this :(

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wolvey1 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 18, 2021 3:03 PM in response to MrBill3

I didn’t realize factory reset is totally different from erase all data on the phone. I finally did that and it cleared up the Other storage.

it only took a week and a second Apple senior advisor to tell me this :(

wolvey1 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 14, 2021 10:10 AM in response to MrBill3

Is factory reset the same as Erase All Content and Settings? If so, that is what I did both times. The second time I did that, I didn’t restore from iCloud but just logged in as my Apple ID.

doing that restored contacts, photos, messages and default Apple apps which only took up about 1gb. Before the restore even finished, the Other storage already filled up to 23gb on the phone. Yet when I plugged the phone into iTunes, it shows zero for other storage.

if I do another reset, there is a step where it asks me to sign into the Apple id. I could skip it and then see if the other storage fills up.

if it does, it points to something wrong with the phone. If it doesn’t, does that mean something is wrong with the Apple ID account?

MrBill3

Level 10

104,434 points

Jan 14, 2021 5:53 AM in response to wolvey1

Hello,

Hmm, that's a tough one where "other" gets out of wack. The link below offers some help, but I doubt that it will completely solve your problem.

How to check the storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

You'll probably just have to do some partial restores, until you can get that bloated "other" category to go away.

Let us know if you get it figured out.

Good luck.

MrBill3

Level 10

104,434 points

Jan 14, 2021 9:26 AM in response to wolvey1

Hello wolvey1,

Ah, you should try a factory reset. I should have thought of it sooner. My bad :-(

Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings

Then, before you restore, check the storage and make sure that it looks OK.

Good luck.

wolvey1 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 14, 2021 9:12 AM in response to MrBill3

I did try partial restore. The last one was just signing into the Apple ID. Only photos, contacts, messages, and the default Apple apps were installed. That only took up less than 1gb and system storage was 7gb. The phone said the other storage has 23gb and only 2gb of free space left. but iTunes says other storage is zero and there is 22gb of free space.

so the phone is out of whack with displaying storage info. Any ideas on how to get it back on track?

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Storage almost full even after hard reset and no restore from icloud backup