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iOS 5 update ate up my available space!

I just installed the iOS 5 update without a hitch, but after syncing everything, I discovered that I now have 13.6 GB of Other installed on my iPad 2, leaving only 3 GB available space left. I had well over 12 GB available before the update. What gives?

Posted on Oct 12, 2011 5:14 PM

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66 replies

Oct 12, 2011 8:11 PM in response to Don Price

Yea me too. Wow. 6.2 GB of other. What is this? Apple, fix it quick!

This is much worse than when the space available was sometimes misrepresented after I checked the "convert my higher bitrate songs..." button.

I had (depending on the afore mentioned previous issue) somewhere between 4.7 and 5.5 GB free on my iPhone before this update. Now I have literally 0.64 GB!!! UNACCEPTABLE.

Oct 12, 2011 8:29 PM in response to Don Price

I had a similar issue while installing the update for my iPhone 4 32 GB. I made sure I backed up both my iPhone and iPad before updates just in case anything crazy were to happen. (It never fails, those of us who are anxious enough to download huge updates right away are the ones that run into the glitches and slow servers!)


Anyways, I had around 9.2GB left before the update. During the process, not only did my iPhone fill up, the meter at the bottom said I was over my capacity by 6.4GB. I almost lost my mind when I saw that, but let the update continue.


Luckily, when everything was done, I re-synced my iPhone with my computer, and I got all of my space back to around 9.0GB. Still not what it was before, but I'll blame that on extra files and new features that came with iOS 5.


Hopefully the rest of you who are having this issue have your iDevices clear things up for you. If not, I'm sure Apple will have an update available in no time to address the issues a lot of people have been having during this update. Good luck!

Oct 12, 2011 8:45 PM in response to Don Price

I updated my iPhone 4 to IOS 5 and ended up with 6+ GB of 'Other'. Following advice I found elsewhere, I unchecked all sync options, sync'd, then rechecked the things that I wanted. 'Other' usage went down to 2.2 GB.


NB:


If you uncheck the box to sync apps, iTunes clears all the apps that you have selected. You will need to go back through all your apps and figure out which ones you want to put on your phone. This is a major failure for iTunes. If I decide to not sync apps, it should not throw away the information about which apps I would sync if I did sync and on which panes they appear.


Apple needs to address this problem ASAP. It is not clear what the phone could have in the Other category when I don't sync anything. And there is 2.2 GB of Other when nothing is being sync'd with the phone (iCloud is turned off).

Oct 12, 2011 8:52 PM in response to Don Price

You ONLY lost 9 GB? Lucky you... when I updated I had iTunes telling me I was 39 GB over capacity! (I had 15 GB free before the update.)


I believe it's just a bug in displaying the capacity though. I ignored the warning, allowed the update to proceed, and eventually ended up with roughly the original 15 GB of free space. All that "Other" just vanished.

Oct 12, 2011 10:53 PM in response to Rhisthel

Turns out a simple restore to iOS 5 with restore from backup did not fix the issue. As others said on other threads, uncheck all your other media sync options (music, video, books, photos, everything but apps), sync, and then re-add them one by one.


When I unchecked my AudioBooks, something clicked and I regained my space. I continued checking each one just to be sure, but what a pain.


Going to leave my iPad alone overnight to finish putting everything back in place.

Oct 12, 2011 11:38 PM in response to Don Price

Happened to me too, looked at my App tab and it was trying to sync ALL my apps, not just the ones I had loaded on the phone before the upgrade. Had about 10 pages of old apps beyond page 11. I went through in the App tab in iTunes and removed all of those and the Other category went back down to 0.95GB. Still have some app re-organizing to do, which is a pain, but at least I can sync again.

Oct 13, 2011 2:35 AM in response to Don Price

I'm having the same issue - "other" is taking up 11.8 GB of 13.73 capacity on my iPhone 4! I had to remove ALL my music for the meantime to allow any free space.


On top of that, I'm also getting an error that says "could not be synced because the sync session failed to finish." It gets all the way to the last step and the error pops up.


I've tried to restore from backup and have unchecked most of my sync screens, but haven't had any luck.


Hoping this is just some hiccups for early iOS 5 downloads. Any help would be appreciated!

iOS 5 update ate up my available space!

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