Ever since I bought my iPad Air, I have only used about 1/3 of its total capacity, consisting mostly of apps and a few small iTunes playlists. Now, it's 14GB over capacity, taken up by a nebulous "documents and data" category. I can't figure out what this is. I checked, and all the other syncing categories are deselected.
How do I fix this? It's not syncing anymore and if I restore the iPad, will I lose a lot of data?
iPad Air Wi-Fi, iOS 10.0.2
If you've updated to iOS 10.3, it implements a new filesystem (AFS) that stores data more efficiently. I believe iTunes 12.6 (new version) is required to work with iOS 10.3. Try updating iTunes and see if things make more sense then.
Hi. I'm not sure how your device can be over capacity, since its storage is finite. But, Documents and Data is all the data being stored by the apps: emails, videos, iBooks, music, album covers, etc. You can see more detail on your device itself by going to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > STORAGE Manage Storage. Note that this is the first Manage Storage. It'll list the apps in size order. When you tap on one, you can see the size of the app and the size of the data. Some apps just keep accumulating data and offer no way to clear it, so the only way to reset them is to remove and reinstall them.
Hi
Go to iCloud backup now over your wifi
After backup settings down to reset restore back to factory settings
Set back up over your wifi when it asks if you want to use iCloud backup Say yes
To get your apps & data back.
I have done this a few times you will not lose your data.
Cheers
Brian
Okay, this is getting weirder. I was looking at the situation from the iPad part on my iTunes. It now says "Over Capacity by 3.84GB. I did as you said and went to the information in iPad. It says I have 4.62GB available. Upon checking the apps and sizes, everything looks to be in order.
So, either my iTunes is going nuts, or my iPad is. I'm not sure what's up at this point.
Okay, the situation is better. It's now showing 5.32GB free. The documents and data are still taking up more space than they should and the "Other" is up to 4GB now. Edit: The "Other" just dropped to 230MB without me having done anything. What the **** is going on here???
It still won't sync, though. The error message is, "The iPad [iPad name] could not be synced because the sync session failed to start."
Please clarify your current update status: iOS 10.3, iTunes 12.6? By the way, Other is temp data, possibly including the downloaded update and new boot image. Things don't disappear immediately, maybe becausd the drive is Flash.
This link: What is "Other" and What Can I Do About It? has some other suggestions that might help.
My "other" part is only 227 MB. The part that's saying "over capacity" is the "documents and data" portion.
I'm updating now. We'll see how that goes. Funny that my iPad usually yells at me incessantly when I have an iOS upgrade available, but not a peep out of it this time.
Yes, I am updated to both of those.
There were a lot of changes in the last couple of hours. Up, down, up, down... It seems to have stablized (I hope) at 15.97GB free.
Good. That sounds more like it. A few restarts always help shake down new software.
iPad over capacity
