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iTunes misreports space available

My iPhone 4S, 16GB was running out of space. I deleted ALL photos and videos from my texts and deleted all but 11 photos from the camera roll. But iTunes still reports more than 6,000 photos taking up a huge amount of space! I tried all of the remedies I found in these discussions. Tried using iPhoto to troubleshoot and it reports (accurately) there are only 11 photos on the phone. The device itself also accurately reports I have freed up around 3GB of available space. But iTunes is confused. I tried restarting and rebooting everything: my iMac, my iPhone, iTunes, etc. and nothing seems to work. I suspect the problem is somehow just with iTunes, possibly because I deleted the photos from the phone manually (not via iPhoto).

iPhone 4S, iOS 7.1.2

Posted on Sep 7, 2014 7:51 AM

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2 replies

Sep 9, 2014 8:39 AM in response to abmyers

Hello there, abmyers.


The following Knowledge Base article offers up some great pointers for troubleshooting issues with free space:


iOS: "Not enough free space" alert when trying to sync

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1503


Try disconnecting and reconnecting your device, then syncing again to solve this issue.

Orphaned files may remain on your iOS device if it is physically disconnected while syncing music, podcasts, videos, or photos. This can prevent iTunes from syncing the iOS device on subsequent sync sessions. When this happens, the Capacity indicator in iTunes may report a large amount of "Other" disk usage for the iOS device. To resolve this issue:

  1. Turn off the music or photo sync option in iTunes for the device.
  2. Click Apply to sync the changes to the device.
  3. Turn the music and photo sync options for the device on again.
  4. Click Apply again to try to sync the device to iTunes.
    If the 'Not enough free space' alert appears, continue to step 5.
  5. Turn off the automatic syncing functions for the iOS device. To do this:
    1. Select the iOS device from the iTunes window and click the Summary tab.
    2. Deselect "Automatically sync when this device is connected" and select the "Sync only checked songs and videos" checkbox.
    3. Click Apply to sync the changes to the device.
    4. Reduce the amount of data that is being synced to the device and resync the device. For example, if syncing your Music library exceeds the memory capacity of the device, choose "Selected playlists" to transfer rather than "All songs and playlists" under the Music tab in iTunes.
      If the 'Not enough free space' alert appears, continue to step 6.
  6. Restore using iTunes.


Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.


Cheers,

Pedro.

Sep 9, 2014 10:55 AM in response to pedro d

Pedro,

I tried everything on your list except Restore from iTunes. Nothing worked. My phone has exactly nine photos and two videos, well under 1GB. iTunes still claims almost all space taken up by photos (9.35 GB and over 6,000 photos and videos). This is not so. The problem persists.


I was about to take the final step: Restore from iTunes but the popup alarmed me by stating the device would be restored to factory settings. So I then looked at discussions regarding Restore and from what I can understand doing this results in the loss of everything: all data, all photos, all music, all apps, home screens, etc. I presume it also loses things like your browsing history, contacts, stored authentication and passwords, etc. This would be a disaster. Am I mis-reading the explanations? Can I get back my apps, home screens, authentication to sites such as my bank, browsing history, etc., without having to start from scratch and re-enter such things, and essentially build a new environment? That would be horrible and I’d like to avoid that.

—andrew myers--

abmyers@verizon.net

http://www.abmyers.net/

iTunes misreports space available

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