iPad mini iPad Mini 6 storage problem..

[Rafterman]

I’ve just realised that all the other iPads in the family (and there are many!) are working with no issue and reporting everything normally. The only difference is that these have been updated from ios14 in the usual way but my Mini 6 arrived with 15 installed. Anyway, only a passing thought..

The Mini shipped with a release candidate version, did you upgrade to the "later" 15?

 

[*~Kim~*]

The Mini shipped with a release candidate version, did you upgrade to the "later" 15?

That's a point - mine with no storage issue is on 15.0 where it will probably stay until an update fixes the icons.

 

[Homeyjay]

Yes but 15.1 was added just a couple of days ago and it made no difference.

The Mini shipped with a release candidate version, did you upgrade to the "later" 15?

 

[wilberforce]

I fully expect my mini 6 is reporting the correct used storage overall. It's just the categorization that's off.

Having used iPads (3) and Ipad Minis (3) for ten years (plus various iPhones), I believe this is correct, and agree with you. I have never been able to make sense of the categorization of the storage on any of my iPads, and often it simply does not add up or make sense. In some cases it is reporting near-zero storage for photos, but I can still pull up full resolution photos without any wifi, bluetooth or cellular connections, so it must be storing the photos somewhere on the device.
I think, however, the total storage usage is roughly correct - but this also varies by GBs, both up and down, day to day with no obvious reason.
I conclude the total storage usage is just a rough indicator, and the categorization is only useful to identify apps that are hogging a lot a data storage so they can be purged. Looking at the storage categorization just creates worry and frustration, a bit like obsessing over the memory usage in Activity Monitor on a Mac.
My experience is that 64GB is likely plenty for most people with typical uses for an iPad, provided you use iCloud, optimize photos, and offload unused apps (e.g., get rid of GarageBand). For many years I used an iPad with only 32GB with no issues.
If you don't use iCloud or want to keep all your photos on the device, or have some other special need for data on the iPad, then 64GB is most likely a bad choice.

 

[jdb8167]

I’ve bought a new iPad Mini 6 (64gb) around a week ago and restored from my iPad Pro (64gb) to get them having all the same apps etc. After everything was done, I noticed that the iPad mini had nearly 10gb less storage space left! Same apps, same data etc, just lost 10gb.

On closer examination, I noticed that I had around 5gb of “system data” at the bottom of the iPad storage app list. My iPad Pro is zero.
Photos on my iPad Pro occupy 3.5gb but the same ones on my Mini use over 6.7gb!

Ive reset to factory twice but when everything’s loaded up, I just have 10gb less storage on the Mini.

UPDATE. By this morning, the difference had risen to nearly 14gb and Apple support are telling me this is normal for the Mini 6! System Data (ie cache) is now up to 7.4gb
I added a whole bunch of apps to see what would happen when it filled up. Got to around 59gb and wouldn’t take anymore. Photos still occupying at least twice what they should despite optimise being on and System Data stubbornly sticking at over 7gb.

I don’t want to take this back to the store - really love this little thing but I can’t lose nearly 15gb of storage of little I have!

Do you guys have any thoughts?

You might hate this idea and it may be impractical depending on how much you use iCloud but I set up my iPad mini from scratch. I don’t see anything taking up extra space with iPadOS taking up 7.45 GB and system data taking 1.67 GB. I haven’t actually downloaded a lot of files yet so I’m at under 34 GB total.

It took me about an hour to set everything up after logging into my iCloud account including going to the App Store Purchased page to download my most used apps. With iCloud Keychain and most apps storing their data in iCloud it was pretty painless. I did have to create a temporary iCloud folder to copy over everything in “On my iPad” to the mini (about 7 GB) with the Files app.

 

[splifingate]

$150 more.

That's the problem.

heh

I pay that every month for auto insurance (2Xvehicles).

Regards, splifingate

 

[wilberforce]

Interestingly, earlier today my iPad Pro reported only 0.1GB storage for Photos.
Now, a few hours later, it is reporting 15GB used for photos (and I haven't done anything to the photos).
The total storage used is unchanged at 38GB.
This confirms to me that the storage categorization is completely unreliable. Or it reallocates based on some mysterious algorithm.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Isn’t the $256gb only $50 more?

$150 more

Not trivial

 

[Realityck]

Just a FYI, but if you previously removed some Apple apps you never use, example GarageBand Quick Transfer doesn't discard them going to a new iPad.

 

[KingofGotham1]

Odd, I’ve had 2 similar issues with storage. My new iPhone 13 Pro Max, after a “quick start” setup I noticed had used ~175gb out of 256, which is pretty high for me. I figured I must have been taking a lot of pics and videos recently and didn’t clean it up. But now, it shows ~103gb used?? I haven’t cleaned anything up. Also on my iPad mini 2 (only 16gb lol) running iOS 12, I noticed the “other” section slowly kept creeping up…while I was on the screen! lol

 

[Homeyjay]

Ok, just an update. I did a factory reset, setup as a new iPad and am manually loading everything as jdb8167 suggested. It seems to be reporting things more accurately now, although I’m still a way from finishing!
Something in the ’restore from backup’ and/or ‘Quick Start’ processes seemed to mess up in my case, on this iPad Mini 6. YMMV..

 

[orange23]

Cook need your extra cash, period

Steve give you inspiration...