8.8gb of "Other" memory?

[Tony the Tiger]

Hey guys I have a jailbroken iPhone 4 32gb on iOS 5.0.1 and when I recently synced my phone with iTunes, it showed that I have 8.8gb of "other" memory. I tried deleting some tweaks and such off Cydia but it hasn't reduced the other memory at all. If anyone could help me determine what this "other" memory is, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Bias X]

I have a fairly large list of things you can do. I just tried to help my buddy get rid of 9.6 GB of other data. Sadly none of it helped. Hopefully something will help you.
By standard having a jailbroken iPhone will take up anywhere from 500MB to 2GB of "other data"

First off we will start with the basic things.
Delete the cache, history, and cookies on any browser you have on the phone.
Removing apps that you don't use or play anymore will also help. I believe game saves and settings in the apps also counts as other, but I could be wrong.
Delete any trash or junk email. Sometimes it can build up, usually the iphone will delete it after a certain amount of days, but its always good to double check.
Delete any tweaks or themes you don't use anymore in Cydia.
Plug your iPhone into iTunes and uncheck open iTunes when iPhone is connected. This presumably makes iTunes double check your "other" data.

Now onto the more complicated stuff, you will need ifile, winscp, or anything like these to access the iPhones internal files. I will guide you through ifile since its what I used. I recommend holding "Power" and "Home" until your device turns off and turning it back on after everytime you delete something. Keep in mind that ifile by standard doesn't delete anything, when you click edit a trash can will show up on the bottom and you can empty the trash that way.
Delete anything in the following folders (unless noted otherwise):
var/mobile/media/applicationarchives
var/mobile/media/downloads
var/spool/mdt
var/mobile/ifile/trash
var/mobile/library/logs look for a file called ilocalis.log, if its there delete it
var/mobile/library/application/support/containers/ Look if there is anything big in there. (the blue button on the right will tell you how big the folder is among other information)

Okay now onto the next part: we can try to locate just one giant file that could be taking up all of your memory.
You'll need to download terminal from cydia.
Open terminal after it downloads.
type su and hit return
The password by default is: alpine the password will not show while typing it, again hit return
Now type find . -size +100M Make sure that M is capitalized
Notices the spaces find (space) . (space) -size (space) +100M CAPITALIZE THE M
This will now list anything with anything over 100MB. It will also list where the file can be found via ifile or winscp.
At this point I can't really help you out, its your choice on what to delete and what not to delete. If you really need some help you can post a screenshot here or In the original creators thread of this tutorial and hopefully someone from imore or Modmyi can help you.

Now onto the last resorts.
Launch iTunes and remove all of your music, make sure you have an purchased music transferred to the computer, hopefully you don't have any music that is on your iphone that isn't on your computer.
Go into ifile.
Tap the "Gear" icon and tap "Hidden Files" to turn it on.
Tap "Done," then tap the "Back" navigation button to go all the way back to the root folder.
Var/Mobile/Media/iTunes Control/Music
You should see a bunch of folders that begin with an "F."
Delete them all.
Hold "Home" and "Power" simultaneously to restart the device.

The other last resort
Var/Mobile/Cache I deleted this entire folder. It deletes all of your apps and all of your settings.

 

[Tony the Tiger]

Thanks, I update once I try all that.

 

[Tony the Tiger]

Ok, I tried deleting the Safari cashe and Mail but it didn't really do anything. However, I tried looking into Terminal and I found this:

View attachment 14229

Now, I know what applications those are, but I'm wondering what the voiceservies are and the iTunes stuff under it is and whether or not I should try and delete them? If I should, how can I delete these?

EDIT: After looking around iFile, I think I found that they're mostly videos, should I delete them using iTunes or using iFile?

EDIT 2: This is simply ridiculous, I've exhausted all solutions from your suggestions. The "other" was reduced by about 300mb but it now takes up more memory than anything else on my phone.

View attachment 14234

I even tried using Terminal to find anything that can occupy 100mb or more and it found nothing.

View attachment 14232

Thank you again Bias X for your input.

This is driving me to insanity, if anyone could provide any additional input, it will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Bias X]

To your first edit, yes those were mostly videos, with the others being caused by apps. I'm not really sure what the voice services is. We deleted that on his phone as well and couldn't figure it out what it did. Didn't change anything though.
I was hoping one of them would work. We saw about a 2.2GB decrease when we tried the iTunes_Control part, but every phone is different.
Curious? Out of those 7.9GB of apps, do you have a lot of in app purchases?

I'm still looking to try and fix my buddies iPhone. If I run across anything else I'll let you know.

The "other" part of it can be caused by apps or just irregularities within the iPhone, but most of the time its corrupted data. Which will cause you to restore.
The only last option is to save your Blobs and restore, then select a backup. Do not restore from backup as the other data will just come back.

 

[Tony the Tiger]

When I removed the iTunes_Control part it took out the Music and Video "sections" on iTunes, or the parts that weren't yellow but blue and purple. I also removed the apps but it only changed the green part of iTunes. It did not change anything from the "other". The apps that I currently have installed do have some in app purchases but I don't think they'll take up 8gb. They are mostly large games such as Real Racing 2, Modern Combat 3, Asphalt 6, etc.

I could try a restore but they are long and risky since I have to preserve my baseband and untethered jailbreak and I'd rather not set up my iPhone as a new iPhone. However, once that untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.1 comes out I will try to upgrade to that OS.

Thank you again for your help Bias X.

 

[Bias X]

Yeah, sorry nothing helped to much.
It was at least worth a shot.
At this point I've just told my friend to manage with the low space until 5.1 untethered comes out, which will hopefully be soon.
I'm still looking for ways to resolve from time to time, but it really seems like the problem is the corrupt data.

 

[onedc]

I had an issue recently with my Other section taking up additional memory 1.6gb of memory seemingly out of nowhere. After much investigation, I remembered I had recently accessed a video from iCloud that was approximately the same size of the additional memory being taken up; but the video would no longer open for some reason.

I did some digging with iFile and found the culprit to be the failed download of the video from iCloud. It appears that the following folder contains downloads from iCloud as well as other applications perhaps:

/var/mobile/Media/Downloads

I inspected the folder sizes and found the file sitting there in one of the folders. Once i removed the folder that contained the file my Other space went back down to normal; somwhere around 1.7gb in my case. This may not be your issue, but if you are using iCloud it may be worth a shot. I'm not certain which files in this directory can be removed, but in my case the failed download once removed did not have any negative impact.

Good luck!

 

[Tony the Tiger]

Thanks for the reply onedc, but unfortunately when I checked /var/mobile/media/downloads there wasn't anything there, but thanks again. I actually use both iCloud and my PC for backups and syncs.

 

[Bias X]

Bumping this in hopes that you'll see it. My buddy had 3 email account on his phone deleted them all and only added his main email. It took his other data from 7gb to 1.1gb.
So if you have more than one email you may want to give that a try.

 

[Peligro911]

Makes since check how far back your email syncs and do you email pics and video maybe all those are sitting in your email as attachments taking up space


Sent Into Orbit from my iPhone 4S using Tapatalk

 

[3cit]

Isn't "other memory" all the cydia applications?? For example, bitesms, and intelliscreenx and sbsettings etc....

 

[Tony the Tiger]

Isn't "other memory" all the cydia applications?? For example, bitesms, and intelliscreenx and sbsettings etc....

I removed a ton of tweaks off cydia and it made little difference.

 

[Tony the Tiger]

Bumping this in hopes that you'll see it. My buddy had 3 email account on his phone deleted them all and only added his main email. It took his other data from 7gb to 1.1gb.
So if you have more than one email you may want to give that a try.

Heh, thanks for the bump, I only have one yahoo account but the actual yahoo account on my computer has over 4000 unread messages.

 

[Tony the Tiger]

Hey guys, I think I found the solution! When I was browsing Cydia a few days ago, I stumbled upon an app called iCleaner. What it does is it deletes unnecessary files off your iDevice. Many of the things that it deletes are things that I've already tried deleting, but there were a few things that I could not get to, such as log files, cache files and partially downloaded cydia packages. I think those packages are what caused my 8gb of "other" data and now it has reduced to 1.76gb.

View attachment 15339

This app saved me from having to restore my iPhone 4. If anyone has too much "other" data I would totally suggest trying this app out.

By the way, if anyone compared this image to my previous images of my capacity, I did download more games after I used iCleaner. Just to clarify so people don't confuse the "other" data for "App" data.

 

[Bias X]

Nice find. I'll have to look out for that if I ever run into any more trouble.

 

[sherlock]

ijailbreak.com has a review on it if you're interested.

 

[JimBeam5]

Hey guys, I think I found the solution! When I was browsing Cydia a few days ago, I stumbled upon an app called iCleaner. What it does is it deletes unnecessary files off your iDevice. Many of the things that it deletes are things that I've already tried deleting, but there were a few things that I could not get to, such as log files, cache files and partially downloaded cydia packages. I think those packages are what caused my 8gb of "other" data and now it has reduced to 1.76gb.

View attachment 15339

This app saved me from having to restore my iPhone 4. If anyone has too much "other" data I would totally suggest trying this app out.

By the way, if anyone compared this image to my previous images of my capacity, I did download more games after I used iCleaner. Just to clarify so people don't confuse the "other" data for "App" data.

Have made an account on here just to thank you for this post right here! Spent a couple of hours trying to figure out why my iPad's other section has eaten 7gb of my space! Trawling through iFile and trying to figure out where the space had gone and iCleaner fixed it up in about 30 seconds!

Thanks a ton!

 

[dbconfession]

Clarification on where to remove music

Hi Bias.

You said:

"Now onto the last resorts.
Launch iTunes and remove all of your music, make sure you have an purchased music transferred to the computer, hopefully you don't have any music that is on your iphone that isn't on your computer."

When you say launch iTunes, do you mean on the computer or on the phone? I'm confused because if I remove all my music from iTunes on the computer, they will not be recoverable. And if you mean iTunes on the phone, my music is not in itunes. Unless you meant to launch the "Music" app on the iphone and delete all my music in there?

Please clarify. Thanks Bias.

-Stuart

 

[CyberXenon]

this is why i like this forum i found 9.2gb of others memory and found this, so by following i go to var/mobile/media/applicationarchives and wow i found 8 .zip files and all are bigger than 1gb that was games i played before so i deleted it and found it is awesome to have 9gb free again and it is really usefull for serious gamers also i dont know why that game files are that big but thank you anyway!!