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Level 8

41,327 points

Tremendous "Other" Section Showing Up in iTunes

Hello everyone -

I know that the "Other" section of my iPad can range from under 1 GB to several GB, depending on how much content I have and whether or not I've added documents into specific apps via iTunes, but I am now seeing the ENTIRE used space as "Other."

This has happened once before, about two months ago.

I know that restoring my iPad will fix it, but is there something else that could be going on here? I just had the same thing happen with my iPhone, and I'm a little worried there's an iOS 6 issue causing this? Or perhaps it's an issue with iTunes/my MacBook?

Any thoughts/ "me too"s are appreciated, and I've attached a reference image, too.

~Lyssa

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.2), 2GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive

Posted on Feb 9, 2013 7:50 PM

23 replies

sberman

Level 10

264,075 points

Feb 9, 2013 9:11 PM in response to Lyssa

Perfect! It sounds like VLC (which I don't know personally) fulfills the criteria of what I would consider a "suspicious" app -- one that just does not seem to be behaving properly.

sberman

Level 10

264,075 points

Feb 9, 2013 9:13 PM in response to Lyssa

... and, by the way, since videos are generally very large files, the fact you've identified a video file handler would tend to increase the odds in my view that you've located an important culprit!

Lyssa Author

Level 8

41,327 points

Feb 9, 2013 9:36 PM in response to sberman

Well, deleted the pictures, reset my settings and....no dice. Still looking at 3 GB of "Other," which isn't the end of the world but is definitely too large.

Time to do a restore, making sure that VLC doesn't go back on, and see if "Other" stays under control.

~Lyssa

sberman

Level 10

264,075 points

Feb 9, 2013 9:55 PM in response to Lyssa

Right. Hopefully "Other" will shrink. I expect in the worst case it would simply stay at 3GB. If it does, you might do well to restore as new and then manually sync. But let's see how the standard restore works first.

Lyssa Author

Level 8

41,327 points

Feb 10, 2013 1:36 PM in response to sberman

Well, the restore flopped in an epic way - iPad would sit on the screen with the Apple logo and progress bar with the progress bar stuck about 2/3 of the way across. In iTunes, I could see the battery charge percent increasing, but no other signs that anything was happening. "Other" started out at 3.53 GB, then went to over 8GB, and an hour went by with absolutely nothing happening on the iPad's screen.

So I gave up on restoring from a backup, reset it and put it in Recovery Mode & have started over. Lost a few things I had bookmarked and a little bit in my reading list, probably because iCloud sync wasn't working properly (a separate issue), but everything seems well otherwise, and "Other" is now under 500 MB.

I've cleared out all the backups for the iPad and will create a new one once I've finished setting up the various apps that require a login. It's a bit of a pain, but hopefully this won't happen again!

Thanks for your help, everyone.

~Lyssa

sberman

Level 10

264,075 points

Feb 10, 2013 1:44 PM in response to Lyssa

Fantastic! You said you only lost a little bit, so I hope you were able to sync stuff like notes, calendar, photos that would be hard to lose and start over with.

And I'm guessing the VLC app is now history 🙂

Thanks for the update, and all the best with your newly invigorated iPad!

Demo

Level 10

166,500 points

Feb 10, 2013 3:15 PM in response to Lyssa

Sorry that I punked out last night, but at my age, I turn into a pumpkin around 10:00 most nights and I was able to make it until just after 11:00 last night so that was a real achievement for me. 😁

You were in good hands anyway and I'm glad that you were finally able to sort this out. Let's hope that your good fortune continues from here on out!

Lyssa Author

Level 8

41,327 points

Feb 10, 2013 6:33 PM in response to sberman

The photos that are on my iPad generally come from my computer or phonen - I don't bother to use it to take pictures very often - and all my calendars are in the cloud, so it's just a matter of setting up my mail accounts again. I switched to Evernote for note-taking ages ago, so no worries there.

The bookmarks aren't a tremendous loss; I'll be able to find the sites/pages/links again at some point. I've got about 600 MB of "Other" now that I've gone through and set everything up, and I think that's about right.

Didn't sync over many of the apps that I'd had previously, but I really didn't need them all anyway. I get carried away with downloading free ones that sound good!

Thanks again for all your help, everyone 🙂

~Lyssa

Tremendous "Other" Section Showing Up in iTunes