iPad claims I am nearly out of space - but I don't see it

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Level 1

71 points

iPad claims I am nearly out of space - but I don't see it

Hi all - my wife's 32GB iPad 2 indicates it is nearly out of space. But a usage check doesn't show nearly that much usage. Photos at about 1GB, a couple of items at upper KBs and then everything else in double and single digit KBs ... and not that many of them. It doesn't come close to adding up. I've tried:

clearing cache, ipad, browser etc
deleting e-mail account, with the intent to add back. But - as soon as I do - it returns almost immediately. iCloud from our iMac maybe?
iPad shows 3 videos (films I had put on at one time) but they do not appear within the videos app. In any case, this would not have made enough of a difference.

Any idea where this mystery space is being taken and how to reclaim it?

Side question - I'd like to clear the photos from the iPad. What is the best way of doing it? I see usage within camera roll and photostream, which is turned on along with an iMac. Can I just assume that because Photostream is on that the iMac already has a copy? Most of the photos were taken with an iPhone, which also has Photostream turned on, and which I would also like to clear.

Thank you.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Jun 24, 2013 7:00 PM

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Answer 1

Diavonex

Level 9

67,217 points

Jun 24, 2013 7:09 PM in response to Forcefour

Settings>General>Usage>Storage>Delete what is not needed, especially videos.

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Answer 2

Forcefour Author

Level 1

71 points

Jun 24, 2013 7:13 PM in response to Diavonex

been there, done that. The issue is that the sum of the usage doesn't come anywhere near the 'used' number. The photos, videos, apps etc total about 3-4GB if I summed them manually, yet the used number shows nearly 28GB. Where is it?

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Answer 3

Diavonex

Level 9

67,217 points

Jun 24, 2013 7:18 PM in response to Forcefour

Connect to iTune (computer) and see how much space Others takes.

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Answer 4

Demo

Level 10

166,494 points

Jun 24, 2013 7:21 PM in response to Forcefour

Side question first....

Forcefour wrote:

Side question - I'd like to clear the photos from the iPad. What is the best way of doing it? I see usage within camera roll and photo stream, which is turned on along with an iMac. Can I just assume that because Photo stream is on that the iMac already has a copy?

No you cannot assume that because they are on the iMac that they will be saved. If you delete photos from your photo stream, they will be deleted everywhere. If you saved the photos from the photo stream into an album in iPhoto or a folder on your hard drive, them you can delete the photo stream photos on both devices and the photos will be stored on the Mac. You can turn the photo stream off on both devices after saving the photos in Settings>iCloud>Photo Stream>Off. Or settings>General>Usage>Storage>Photos and Camera>Swipe across Photo Stream and the red delete button will pop up.

As for the storage issue, you may have a good deal of storage being used by "other". You can check that by connecting the iPad to the Mac, launch iTunes, click on your iPad name under the device heading and then look at the capacity bar at the bottom. "Other" will vary according to how many documents that you have on your iPad, email messages, text messages, contacts, Safari History, notes, and all other "stuff" associated with your apps, but not the apps themselves.

If your "other" is larger than 3-4 GB, you may have corrupt data, files, or photos on the iPad and that can cause that "other" to balloon. Theoretically, if you have many, many files like Keynote presentation files, Pages documents, Numbers documents, etc., you could have a fair amount of storage being used by those files and there may be not corruption issue at all going on. The only way to know for sure is by connecting the iPad to iTunes and take a look.

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Answer 5

Forcefour Author

Level 1

71 points

Jun 24, 2013 7:24 PM in response to Diavonex

Other is 24.34GB. Thanks. That mystery is solved. So now - what is the other and how would I clean it up?

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Answer 6

Forcefour Author

Level 1

71 points

Jun 24, 2013 7:27 PM in response to Forcefour

no Keynote, not much in the way of Pages or Numbers documents. My wife does use this as her primary device for e-mail and browsing. While there is an iMac available she rarely uses it.

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Answer 7

Demo

Level 10

166,494 points

Jun 24, 2013 7:33 PM in response to Forcefour

The most commonly suggested way and sometimes the only way to get rid of that bloated "other" is to restore the iPad iOS and then restore from a backup. If that doesn't work, then you might have to restore as new and add your apps and other content back to the device without using the backup since the backup could be corrupt.

Restoring the iOS and then restoring from a backup is easy to do and you will not lose anything if you do it properly, so you can try that first. You will want to restore from a backup that you already have because if you backup now, and that backup is corrupt, it won't do any good to restore from it.

How to backup and restore from a backup

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766

But before you go to all of the trouble to restore as new, take a look at some of those tips fro clearing up "other". One may work for you and it could be a simple fix. There are lots of these suggestions in here.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how%20to%20get%20rid%20of%20other%20on%20iPad

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Answer 8

Forcefour Author

Level 1

71 points

Jun 24, 2013 7:36 PM in response to Demo

Thank you. I'm sure one of these will work. I will check the tips before the restore. This iPad has been like this for awhile so I suspect the backup that I already have will already be a problem if it turns out the corruption is within the backup. Just wouldn't want to lose any pictures or video during this process. Any chance of that if the corruption carries through to the icloud backup?

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Answer 9

hexonxonx

Level 4

2,477 points

Jun 24, 2013 7:36 PM in response to Demo

Thats's right. I did this early this morning wanting to get rid of 3GB of other. It worked and was fast. My other dropped to 1GB which is about average.

I too did a search and tried some of the suggestions. Only restoring worked.

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Answer 10

Diavonex

Level 9

67,217 points

Jun 24, 2013 7:40 PM in response to Forcefour

How to fix "Others"

http://osxdaily.com/2011/10/18/itunes-other-capacity-taking-up-tons-of-space-fix /

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