Help in reducing "other" space

Discussion in 'iPhone Tips, Help and Troubleshooting' started by drw, Jul 9, 2013.

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  1. drw, Jul 9, 2013

    drw macrumors member

    Joined:
    Sep 16, 2008
    #1
    I know this topic comes up all the time- I have had this issue from time to time on various iphones in the house and have always been able to solve it- but this time I am stumped-

    My daughter's 4s has over 4 GB of other, which equates to almost 1/3 of her free space.

    But on her phone, I have not been able to reduce the "other" amount. She even got her phone replaced last week due to a bad lock button- I restored from backup, and the 4GB showed up again, which to me meant that the problem was in the backup we used to restore.

    So what I did was delete all photos and videos from her camera roll (she had a ton), then removed all apps and music, and unchecked the sync buttons so that I could do a sync and backup and have ZERO photos, apps and music on the phone. Also turned off mail, deleted voice mail, cleared safari cache, deleted all texts, etc, etc.

    I then did one more sync and backup, and pretty much had nothing on the phone whatsoever. Then I restored from that backup, thinking surely that would at least reduce the other amount.

    But it didn't- when the restore was complete, the 4 GB of other returned, even though there was no data, no apps, no music, and no photos on the phone.

    At this point I am stumped- the only thing I have not tried is restore as new phone, which I don't want to do but may have to. I just don't understand why its still there after I took everything off the phone.....

    Anyone have any ideas?????
     
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  2. C DM, Jul 17, 2013

    C DM macrumors Westmere

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    #2
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  3. aimee.elizabeth, Jul 17, 2013

    aimee.elizabeth macrumors 6502

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    Sep 28, 2012
    #3
    Set the phone up as new. I don't think it matters that you deleted all the data off of your phone, but the backup you're using is still the old one which means it could have corrupted files inside. The best thing to do is to restore the phone and set it up as new, then sync back all your data like photos and apps, and not use the backup. All the information that you wiped off the phone is shown on the storage bar - music, video, documents&data, apps, photos etc, but the other section is comprised of things we don't really know, presumably miscellaneous files in the backup folder. So my suggestion is to not ever use that backup file, and just set up as new, sync, and start a new backup.
     
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  4. JPNFRK7, Jul 17, 2013

    JPNFRK7 macrumors 6502

    JPNFRK7

    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2012
    Location:
    California
    #4
    The only thing that I found that was taking up the "other" section was many years of attachments that were built up in the messages app. Apparently the messages app saves a copy of every picture that comes in and goes out. The only way I was able to clean this was being jailbroken and deleting all of the attachment files in the app using iFile.

    Otherwise if you are on 6.1.3+ you will need to restore as new as others have said above.

    The reddit article that I used to clean the "other" (Jailbreak Only):
    http://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/1ez4f7/psa_the_guide_to_cleaning_up_your_other_section/
     
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  5. testcard, Jul 18, 2013

    testcard macrumors 68030

    testcard

    Joined:
    Apr 13, 2009
    Location:
    Northumbria, UK
    #5
    PhoneClean works well for me - both with iPhone and iPad. Clears caches and gets rid of junk files.
     
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