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Free Up Space on iCloud

B

brettnussb

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 29, 2009
15
0
I have 5 GB of storage and my iPhone back-up is taking up 4.8 GB.

I cannot figure out where all the space that is being taken up is coming from. My Camera Roll is 1.2 GB and then it lists all my Apps. I have a ton of Apps listed below Camera roll, but they are only taking up anywhere from 5 MB to less than 1 KB, which should no add up to another 3+ GBs.
 
I got that, but how can I figure out what is using the remaining 3 GBs of space if its not apps or Camera Roll?
 
brettnussb said:
I got that, but how can I figure out what is using the remaining 3 GBs of space if its not apps or Camera Roll?
Click to expand...

Messages and MMS data.

Go to Settings -> General -> Usage, and see what your "Messages" are taking up. iCloud backs all of that up, but then stupidly, doesn't list it as an "app" in the iCloud backup set details.
 
iOS 6.0.x had a nasty bug where SMS/MMS/iMessage attachments (images, etc) would be saved as part of your backup (and thus uploaded to iCloud).

If you are jailbroken, you can check these two locations:

/var/mobile/Library/SMS/Attachments/

/var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.MobileSMS/ExtendedPreviews/Attachments
 
I also had this and I found that all the apps, etc from my old phone were still stored on iCloud. I deleted that and got half of my space back.
 
I deleted a ton of messages & it brought down my messages from 3.9 GB to 2.6 GB, but is still having saying not enough space. How do I delete Apps off phones that I no longer have? Any other suggestions? My last back-up was 12/14 & nothing drastic has changed since then.

Messages are 2.6 GB
Camera Roll is taking up 1.4GB

The biggest App is 6.6 MB.
 
brettnussb said:
I deleted a ton of messages & it brought down my messages from 3.9 GB to 2.6 GB, but is still having saying not enough space. How do I delete Apps off phones that I no longer have? Any other suggestions? My last back-up was 12/14 & nothing drastic has changed since then.

Messages are 2.6 GB
Camera Roll is taking up 1.4GB

The biggest App is 6.6 MB.
Click to expand...
Deactivating stuff won't make the existing backup any smaller, it doesn't delete files - it just keeps those apps from future backups. Delete the old one and back it up again with the new settings.
 
Would you mind clarifying? These Apps shouldn't even take up that much space to begin with. If Camera Roll & Messages are about 4 GB, where is the other 1 GB coming from?
 
brettnussb said:
Would you mind clarifying? These Apps shouldn't even take up that much space to begin with. If Camera Roll & Messages are about 4 GB, where is the other 1 GB coming from?
Click to expand...

The cleanest way is to delete and turn off iCloud backup. Restart phone and turn on iCloud backup again. Mystery solved :)
 
brettnussb said:
Would you mind clarifying? These Apps shouldn't even take up that much space to begin with. If Camera Roll & Messages are about 4 GB, where is the other 1 GB coming from?
Click to expand...
Sure.

When you make your initial backup, say it'll take up 2000 MB. included in these 2 GB (I know, I know) there is a video à 100 MB. Now you delete the video, but you have taken a new video à 200 MB. Next time you back up your phone, the size of the backup in iCloud won't be 2000-100+200, but 2000+200.

If you delete the new video as well, and back up to iCloud again, the size of the backup in iCloud will still be 2.2 GB and not 1.8 GB. If you want the backup to be 1.8 GB to better reflect the current state, you'll need to remove the old backup and make a new one. But it'll grow in size as well as time goes by. It's how incremental backups work. It's not a sync service.

Imagine you'd delete a video by mistake and the automatic backup is made before you realize it - how happy would you be to see it gone from the one place designed to save it? :)
 
Thanks for your help & much appreciated. How do I delete the old back ups from my iPhone? Is there a way to go through the old back ups on my iPhone or computer and decide what I want to keep or don't?

I don't have any pictures, etc on a back-up that is not on my phone.
 
There was a bug in iOS 6 that if you deleted messages they would disappear from view but the storage space wouldn't be released.

However you should be able to see the wasted space in iCloud settings. For example if I delete every single message from my phone my storage space still reports messages using 1.7gb.

The fix for that is restore from new or modify the back up using ibackupbot.

But like I said you should be able to see that in iOS 7.
 
brettnussb said:
Thanks for your help & much appreciated. How do I delete the old back ups from my iPhone? Is there a way to go through the old back ups on my iPhone or computer and decide what I want to keep or don't?

I don't have any pictures, etc on a back-up that is not on my phone.
Click to expand...
As far as I know, you can't "clean" old iCloud backups that way.

You delete it by digging deep into the iCloud settings :) You'll find the delete button something like four-five menus in.
 
Xenomorph said:
iOS 6.0.x had a nasty bug where SMS/MMS/iMessage attachments (images, etc) would be saved as part of your backup (and thus uploaded to iCloud).

If you are jailbroken, you can check these two locations:

/var/mobile/Library/SMS/Attachments/

/var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.MobileSMS/ExtendedPreviews/Attachments
Click to expand...

how is that a bug exactly? I like that all my message history is backed up to iCloud. I believe it's intentional on Apple's part.
 
Zmanbaseball2 said:
I only read the OP's post and posted what I thought... Didn't read anyone else's post because I did not have time to.
Click to expand...

Haha, don't worry about it. I just found it funny he thanked you for your advice when I was guiding him to do the same thing ;)

----------
joejoejoe said:
how is that a bug exactly? I like that all my message history is backed up to iCloud. I believe it's intentional on Apple's part.
Click to expand...

He has either misinterpreted something or explained it very poorly. The bug present in early versions of iOS 6 didn't delete deleted attachments in the Messages app. So say you received a video clip from a friend, then deleted the thread/message - the video clip would still be stored on your phone, with no access to it, just taking up space.
 
joejoejoe said:
how is that a bug exactly? I like that all my message history is backed up to iCloud. I believe it's intentional on Apple's part.
Click to expand...

It saved *deleted* messages.


Lets say your friend sends you 10GB of hilarious cat GIFs. You look at them all, then delete them. The end result would be your backups being 10GB larger as well as your "Other" being 10GB larger, because iOS never actually deleted them.
You cannot view them, because you "deleted" them. iOS is still saving them in a location you cannot access, but that location gets saved as part of your backup. I maxed out an iCloud backup with an "empty" device, all because of deleted attachments being saved.
There was no fix for iOS 6 except to jailbreak (which gave you access to the locations the images/attachments were saved, allowing you to manually delete them).

iOS 7 does something similar, it keeps deleted messages. They are not part of the backup though. Getting 10GB of cat GIFs may cause your "Other" to grow by 10GB, but your backup does not. The "fix" is to backup, Restore, then restore from backup.
 
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