Hidden Documents + Data — Huge Size

Hello—


Ever since upgrading to iOS 10 I have been unable to back up my iPhone, which I do to my computer. The problem is the Documents & Data portion of my sync has seemingly 10-folded in size. I've read on this forum and elsewhere about finding the problem apps, and deleting / reinstalling them, but the problem seems to be a seemingly big set of data that isn't present in any of the apps. When I've checked in each app, they list barely any documents & data space requirements. Beyond my iPhone messages, this should be no more than half the size. What am I missing here? Do I just need to reset my phone (which I don't want to do since I can't back anything up!). I've attached photos if that helps.


User uploaded file


User uploaded file

iPhone 6s, iOS 10.2.1

Posted on Feb 11, 2017 10:13 AM

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3 replies

Feb 12, 2017 2:23 PM in response to Peter Labuza

Hello Peter,


Thanks for that info and choosing the Apple Support Communities. If I understand correctly, you are unable to backup your iPhone to iTunes on your computer. To start with, please follow the steps in this article on not being able to backup:


If your iTunes backup couldn't be completed or you can't restore from a backup


Let us know the results of these steps. We'll help you get through this. Cheers!

Feb 17, 2017 5:49 AM in response to Peter Labuza

Hi,

I had a similar problem. Almost half of my storage was Documents and Data, and no way of knowing what this related to specifically. This was about 20GB!

I decided to try to resolve, so before doing anything, I backed up my phone on iCloud.

I connected the phone to my mac and observed the memory usage bar like you show above. The phone was completely choked with data.

I don't know about you, but I have played candy crush in the past and I reached level 1,000, before giving up this dreadful addiction. Anyway, I couldn't understand how I was able to play any level of candy crush at any time, but the iPhone suggests this app only took up about 300mb. So I removed candy crush from my phone using the Apps page in itunes. Instantly, my docs and data usage fell by about a quarter. I freed up about 4GB! This must have been candy crush data.

Next, I deleted all my versions of Angry birds. Removal of Angry Birds (originals) and Angry Birds Seasons freed up space again.

So my theory was that all the apps save game data in this section on the phone.


However, its no good removing these apps if you use them a lot.


So what I did next was reset my phone to factory settings, and then restore from my iCloud back up.


Still updating the Apps, but the amount of storage used for Documents and Data is now only 1.5GB, and, yes, Candy Crush has loaded and still starts up at level 1000.


It also looks like the amount of space used by Apps in total has fallen too.


So that could be the solution. Back up and restart the phone from factory settings. Give your self 3-4 hours to do this properly. Updating the apps is taking ages today, because my BB is down to about 10mbps, rather than the normal 25.


I'll update when the phone is completely finished updating apps and I have reloaded my music.

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Hidden Documents + Data — Huge Size

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