'Other' using up all storage.

[gibson.annjohn]

My 'available' storage started to rapidly reduce over the course of one week shortly after upgrading to iOS 8.1.2. The device is an IPad 3, 32 GB. I visited the Apple store in Perth WA and it was suggested that the only solution was a factory reset. ITunes showed 'other' using up 16.4 GB. The total storage space available was given as 27.2GB.
With all important info backed up to iCloud I reset the pad and all seemed okay, but after a couple of days the available storage had reduced dramatically and 'other' was shown as 17.8GB. I reset the pad again and then watched the progression of available storage thereafter, After restoring the usage was 3.4GB, this more or less agreed with the addition of the app usage. This morning this had increased to 3.8GB and by 21.15 to 7.8GB. The only usage was taking screen shots of this progression. 3 photos! It would seem the 'other' is increasing again almost exponentially. What can be the cause?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

The Other category can be many things: cached email messages/attachments, photos/videos, application data, saved game data, documents/PDFs, Safari bookmarks/caches. backups,notes, voice memos, the actual iOS system files, etc.

With you iPad selected in iTunes go to the Apps section down toward the bottom in File Sharing you can view any documents/files that are used by various apps by clicking on the name of the app. In the Settings > Manage Storage section on the iPad itself, you will see each app listed and the space it is using. If you click on an app name, it will then show you how much any related documents and data for that app are using. You can also look in Settings > Safari/Mail/etc to see any caches they are using.

C