All iPads "Other" in system files?

the way i've done it on my iphone, is backing it up to itunes first, then completely restoring the phone. but i believe over time the "other" will come back. i believe its where the cache for safari and other apps is stored.

 

don't do the restore to backup. just do the complete restore. as if its a new ipad. then when its back on, open itunes and restore from back up

 

Welcome to Apple...the "other" section has been a nuisance for years now on iDevices.

The main way I manage it now is by jailbreaking my device and running iCleaner which does a good job telling you how much space was freed. Usually this cuts my "other" section in half.

I've seen it go up faster of late with the release of iTunes Match/Radio as the temporary files such as album art, etc are stored in "other."

Keep in mind, however, if you jailbreak, the jailbreak files are also stored in "other" so it will inflate just from whatever tweak you install!

 

Emails, bookmarks, messages, app data. Basically anything that isn't a photo, video, music, iBook, app is 'other'

 

Yes it can be deleted, once you determine what it is.

You asked what was in other. I told you. Now use that information to figure out what needs to be deleted.

Two places to start. Streaming video apps and email. Video apps that aren't optimized properly don't always dump their cache. Force quit the apps and then reboot your device.

Email is another, especially if you use gmail. Google borked their iMAP support in the native mail app and flipped local hosting of the archive folder on by default. That folder contains every email ever sent or received since the account was started so it can be very very big.

 

I have about 10GB of "other" on my 64GB iPad Air

 

I have found that "Other" category of storage is a huge problem particularly since OS 7 came out.

I do not think it is data associated with any app. That should show up on the list of storage space consumed by apps when you go to Settings>General>Usage.

I have had 5 or more GB consumed by Other, then done a full backup, wipe device to factory settings, then restore backup and seen many GBs of space be recovered by this procedure. In fact, the first few times this happened, I was surprised by the sudden increase in free space and thought the restore operation didn't fully complete. I frantically searched the device to find what was missing, but everything seemed to be there, and eventually accepted it. Now I know that Other is mostly or completely junk data that, for some reason, iOS can't take care of itself. Which is really annoying. A backup/wipe/restore is time-consuming and I don't like doing it.

With iOS 7, the rate at which Other increases in size seems to be much higher. I am hopeful iOS 7.1 solves this.

 

I agree, it is too much wasted space to have on a device.

 

Seems like a fundamental flaw or omission in iOS that it doesn't do its own housecleaning. Maybe it's a battery saving measure. It should do it when you plug it in.

 

Isn't "Other" also where over-the-air IOS upgrade files are stored? If so, then those can't be deleted without a clean restore — and those files can take up a huge chunk of the available space.

 

It's the walled garden that isn't letting you delete those files

 

You have to be a iFile/iFunbox ninja to delete those files. Sometimes .zips of apps get stored in a archive location on the iDevice and have to be manually deleted. If you have a HUGE "Other" file with no known App Data taking up that kind of space in apps 9 times out of 10 its the problem I stated above.

 

iOS should just have an option to "Clear cache" or "Optimize storage space" to keep control of "other" files in it.

Stupid things like this are annoying. iOS is dead simple, easy to use, and offer great experience. But in the same time it's also hard/impossible to do maintenance or something a bit more advanced. If Apple doesn't want it, then it can't be done. The workaround like JB often do more harm than good.

For example, something like local file sharing is impossible. Whenever my friends aks me to share a simple photo, I can't do it easily. I have to put it on Dropbox or something. Whaat?

iOS 7 has AirDrop but it's limited between selected iOS devices ONLY (Not even compatible with AirDrop on OSX, despite share an exactly same name).
See how stupid that is?

 

You likely would regret deleting, even if you could. This "other" data has always been there. Restore will only decrease it for a while as it will grow again.

There have been so many threads about this

 

I agree. I wouldn't go around playing with the Other category. It's labeled so ambiguously for a reason. Quite frequently, there is saved app data that you use and don't know about or remember that's stored in Other.

 

I've had as much as 6GB on an 8GB iPod touch. Found out that it was corrupt data so I resynced the iPod and it was all good-of course that was from corrupted data and the stuff u have is just normal other data...it is fine-
Other is just stuff like emails documents messages and other random stuff that is within the apps...