Q: Help, iPad's "other" space taking so much space!!!!!

Whaleys2's suggestion helped me clear my other. Mine was due to videos that I deleted not being completely deleted. As soon as I closed the video player and re synced with iTunes it was cleared.

Thanks!

Hi guys,

I've tried all your ideas but my 64gb ipad mini still has 26gb of "OTHER"

I have no idea what to do, help please?

When I did a restore it seemed to fix my problem

You said you've tried them all but I have to ask anyway....Did you power it OFF (not put it to sleep)?  If not, power it down to completely shut if off, let it off a minute, then power it back on?  Like a computer, a reboot will release memory that has been tied up by a program (even after you've closed the program).  And a reboot will also release deleted items that you've deleted but they are hung up in an unavailable (can't see what is in the "other") space on your iPad.

Cindy

Sometimes, orphaned files or something chock up "Other". I have always found re-starting the iPad would significantly reduce the "Other". No idea why, but it works! I just reduced by 5.5gb Other to almost zero by re-booting it.

1.5GB? Lucky you. My "Other" is 12.5GB and I cannot get rid of it.

The space used by other is a "catch all" classification for anything that does not conform to the described categories. I have been working on ipads for some time and found that the most common reason for large "Other" space has been the result of using a CCK. iOS has a nasty bug where it will not release the space used by photo's when you delete them from the ipad.

You have to understand a little about how things are indexed in iOS to get a background on this issue. When you are looking at the space being reported it is using internal indexes in the device to reflect this information. When you delete a photo from the ipad it will remove the index entry and in the event it fails to delete the file that associated file space will now move from photo to other. This is a known bug in iOS, the first priority of the OS is a good user experience. As a result when an error occurs it will keep moving and try and reconcile the error during sync. If that cannot be done then the only apple approved process is to restore device and restore backup.

The only alternative workaround to this is to use iExplorer and go clean it up yourself. This has been an issue with ipads for several years. The bug has been reported numerous times. We use iPads with a CCK for the preview of photo sessions with clients. As a result of this issue we have to wipe all ipads each month, failure to do so will result in an ipad without enough free space to import. This issue is a small annoyance when working with a couple of ipads, it is a large headache when managing a few thousand.

Is that bug only with CCK's? I was using one to import photos, then deleting the images off the ipad through the ipad. I recently stopped importing them through the CCK, now I upload them to photobucket through my laptop then download them to the ipad as I want to use them. However, I do use Camera quite a bit. I delete my Camera Roll photos through the Ipad, not through Windows Explorer.

After updating to iOS6 at the end of last month, my "Other" jumped almost 300M to 1.05G without having imported any photos thru a CCK.

When you write "restore device and restore backup", do you mean wipe and restore from the back up or wipe and set up as a new ipad?

Message was edited by: GieshaGirl

I had this problem way before using CCK.

I hope this will be fix with iOS 7 !!

What I would like, and I find incomprehensible that it doesn't exist, is a response from Apple about this issue. Something in Itunes or a built in app that lets you see and clear what you can in that folder to free up space. Or even an official statement from the top saying telling us EXACTLY and TRULY what takes up so much space.

Why is the answer to every computer problem "reformat your harddrive"?

The issue was exponentially worse following the update to iOS 6. The devices that we did not update are able to operate nearly 6 months before the problem becomes critical. With iOS 6 devices they will die at 45 days. Sadly this issue was not identified until nearly 75% of our devices had been upgraded.

The issue is not isolated to the CCK. Essentially any image that is stored to the camera roll of the device is capable of exhibiting this issue. You can actually confirm this issue using the "iPhone configuration utility". When a device is connected you can use the ICU to view the console. When deleting images you will see the errors that IOS encounters while trying to delete the photos.

What i mean by "restore device and restore backup" ....

For devices running iOS 6 we run the "Restore iPad" command after that is complete we "Restore Backup".

Alternatively using iExplorer you can simply open the DCIM directory and remove the photos directly. This is often 10x faster but it does not cleanup the cache data. To cleanup 40GB of orphaned photo/video files the process takes 11 minutes. In addition, I have found that running this from a windows machine is vastly faster then using OSX. Running this from OSX takes about 48 minutes, not sure why.

We have been investigating a number of alternatives. There are some tools that fix this issue but they are only available for devices that have voided their warranty.

If you want to know exactly what is taking up so much space. Use iExplorer. Mount the device use a tool like TreeSizeFree to enumerate the space used by all of your directories.

Then compare this to the Settings -> General -> Usage

Painfully this will highligh where the problem is. While, in my line of work, I have experienced this issue with Photos, that is not the only place that is hit by the problem. This same issue can also result from applications whos sandbox expand without releasing the space.

Thanks for the replies! I thought that restoring from backup would give me back the same "other" data as before, when I restore from backup after upgrading the iOS my other was the same as before upgrading.

Odd, I noticed - before upgrading - that if I cut and pasted my camera roll photos from the ipad through Windows to my harddrive image folder there was an increase in Other, but when I stopped doing that "Other' appeared to remain the same.

I've also noticed a discrepancy between what Itunes says I have free and what Windows Explorer says I have free (when looked at as a removable device) - it's about 15.33G in Itunes and 15.5G in Windows. Can't figure that one out either.

Have you tried just powering the iPad off (not put to sleep but power down)?  No need to restore.  Powering off, waiting a minute, and then powering back on will release almost all but a gig of Other.  Cindy

Yes i think everybody tried that!!