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Missing Storage Space on iPhone 6 Plus

I have an iPhone 6 Plus 16GB Verizon model and although I know this question has been asked a number of times, I can't seem to find an answer that actually makes sense to me so here goes.


The phone was bought new in January 2015 and a backup from my old iPhone 5 was loaded onto this phone. Going through the process, iTunes showed the phone as having a capacity of 14.x GB of space before the backup was installed. After the backup, Settings - General - About shows capacity as 11.8 GB as seen below.

User uploaded file

So far so good. I follow that the loss from the touted 16 GB down to 11.8 GB is due to formatting and iOS taking space.


Now the part I don't seem to understand. I just connected the phone to iTunes and did a backup and iTunes shows the phone as having 6.45 GB of available space. If I eject the phone and reconnect to iTunes, it still shows that there is 6.45 GB of available space, yet when I go to Settings - General - Usage, it states that 8.5 GB are used and 3.3 GB are available as seen below.

User uploaded file

So, where is the missing 3.15 GB. I clicked on Manage Storage and went through every item listed and added up all the space that these items are using and the total comes to 5.35 GB, yet it is saying 8.5 GB is used in the pic above.


Can someone please explain where the missing 3.15 GB can be found. I have only been using the phone for about 3 months and I don't stream music or videos, etc and I do NOT have iOS 8.3 sitting on my phone waiting to be installed.


I would greatly appreciate it if someone could give me a rational explanation as to where this hidden 3 GB resides and how I can reclaim it.


Thanks.


Dan

iPhone 6 Plus, iOS 8.1.2

Posted on Apr 20, 2015 9:43 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Apr 22, 2015 4:37 PM

Hello Dan,


I am having the exact same issue except mine might be a little worse. I restored my phone and "set up as new" about 3 times. I didn't have much to lose as far as "backup" was concerned so I just went ahead and wiped the whole phone clean. I am missing 10gb.


User uploaded file

I Have accepted the fact that iOS takes 5.2GB of storage to run my phone (which is ridiculous). I have also added up all my used data in the "manage storage" portion in setting and it adds up to about 2gb. So basically I have about 10GB unaccounted for. I chatted with apple twice and talked to supervisors and they all tried to walk me through the same process of restoring, rebooting, clearing cache, resetting etc. nothing has worked. I've come to the conclusion that it's a faulty flash drive and we just need to return our phones for new ones. Nothing can be done.

5 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Apr 22, 2015 4:37 PM in response to Mymacisback

Hello Dan,


I am having the exact same issue except mine might be a little worse. I restored my phone and "set up as new" about 3 times. I didn't have much to lose as far as "backup" was concerned so I just went ahead and wiped the whole phone clean. I am missing 10gb.


User uploaded file

I Have accepted the fact that iOS takes 5.2GB of storage to run my phone (which is ridiculous). I have also added up all my used data in the "manage storage" portion in setting and it adds up to about 2gb. So basically I have about 10GB unaccounted for. I chatted with apple twice and talked to supervisors and they all tried to walk me through the same process of restoring, rebooting, clearing cache, resetting etc. nothing has worked. I've come to the conclusion that it's a faulty flash drive and we just need to return our phones for new ones. Nothing can be done.

Apr 23, 2015 6:19 AM in response to Jwstundra

Jwstundra,


Thanks for chiming in. Indeed, your case seems far worse than mine. I haven't gone the route of wiping it clean and restoring it to see if the lost GB are reclaimed before restoring my backup. Even though it will only waste about 15 minutes of my time to set the phone back to out of box settings, I don't feel I should have to go to this extreme after using the phone for just 3 months to reclaim storage space. And since it didn't help you in the least, it makes me want to try it even less.


I feel iOS 8.x is very buggy compared to my old iPhone 5 running iOS 6.1.2. I stayed on 6 because I didn't much care for the look of 7 & 8 and figured 8 would slow down the iPhone 5 enough that it would aggravate me, so stayed with 6 and was happy.


I guess I will continue to scour the web for a while to see if I can uncover any other solutions to this weird problem.


Thanks again for chiming in.


Dan

Apr 23, 2015 1:58 PM in response to harinderbachhal

harinderbachhal,


Thanks for chiming in. I am diligent about deleting my photos/videos from the deleted folder myself once I delete something. Nothing has ever gotten past the 30 day mark without me deleting it so I doubt this is where I am losing space but I will try the changing of the date and see if anything shows up.


Thanks again.


Dan

Apr 23, 2015 2:01 PM in response to harinderbachhal

harinderbachhal wrote:


Hi i also had this problem ... actually this is because of new feature of - Latest Deleted Photos.... actually this dont let any thing get delete automatically you have to delete them manually ... here is the video which will help you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WT3Z0Hals4

😉

That issue was resolved with the iOS 8.3 update.

Missing Storage Space on iPhone 6 Plus

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