I want my 8gigs back..... "other" category taking alot of memory

[conanheath]

I'm saying you've used 5GB of space for app data that isn't one of the categories specifically broken out. But it's your data. If you hard reset your phone (clear it back to out of the box condition) then Other will be pretty much nothing. I'll post a shot when my refurb arrives next week, if you don't want to do it on yours.

You're not giving up anything, you're using the device.

I do understand it is my data but is it necessary? Or is it cached data since I got phone which is no longer necessary? I have android at work and use it far more than I do my 920 for far more tasks. Pictures and video, Skydrive, one note, email stored locally. You name it and I do about 10 times as much on Razr. It does create about 5000 folders, subfolders and files for this data, but no where near 5gb of data. It may have 1gb of data give or take. I've checked thanks to a fully featured file explorer. The other category can not just be misc app data. 5gb is a whole lot of data!!!Either there are software, apps or OS, that are not clearing this data or this OS is going to be very limited. $10 MS or devs can fix this and one day we are going to see far less other data. I'm not willing to factory reset my phone because I can just dump music but some people don't have this option.

 

[Keith Wallace]

Mine is currently at 4.21 GB of data, and I'm convinced it HAS to be related to the number of installed apps. I'm sure a chunk of it is related to Nokia Maps (I have 251.3 MB of maps installed on my phone), but that's it. I just went (after looking at the size of "Other") and deleted my browsing, search, and maps history like was suggested, along with resetting my camera and Office. It dropped it to an exact 4.00 GB, so there is SOME blame there. However, that is still 4.00 GB that's not fully accounted for.

I've got the 251.3 MB of data from my installed maps (of IL and MOP), but I don't know about the rest. I have a Lumia 920 though, and am at 5.32 GB of free space, so I am not too concerned about a storage crunch, but I'm pretty sure it has been mentioned that uninstalled apps leave something behind before, so I am wondering if we need something like Android, where you can manually go in and delete all data related to a specific app.

Whatever the cause, they definitely need to give people the ability to see what it is. I have a lot of games on my phone, but their saves should not make up 3+ GB when the probably 50+ games on my Xbox 360 probably don't take up that much.

 

[Mystictrust]

"Other" includes any/all of the following: email account data, documents (be they attachments or storage cached from SkyDrive and SharePoint), browser history/cache, downloaded maps data, application settings/data (for example if an app downloads a lot of cached images for live tiles or lockscreen art, etc.), and pretty much all the non-categorized stuff. It sucks we can't "see" more specifics, and that's what I'd like to see improved, but my guess is you sync a lot of email data and attachments and/or maps and browser information. You could try the following:

• Settings > Applications > Internet Explorer > Delete History
• Settings > Applications > Maps > Delete History
• Settings > Applications > Search > Delete History
• Settings > Applications > Reset Office

I read a couple of the responses above and see things like "I only had 450MB free" (not picking on one person, just using an example) and think to myself, "WTF?! Remove some content, install update, and sync the content back again. YOU chose to install so many apps and content." Some of you are just complaining to complain because you want a piece of plastic and silicon to be smarter than you. "Gee, why can't I use my phone without consuming disk space?! WHAT?! YOU MEAN APPS TAKE UP SPACE?!" Good grief people, think!!

So you're saying this is normal behavior. I see

 

[rdubmu]

So you're saying this is normal behavior. I see

I believe it is also your email. Change it to sync only 7 days.

 

[masterchief1984]

MS needs to get off their collective a$$es and get moving. If they want to put out half baked, Swiss cheese software they better be prepared to fix more than one problem a quarter. BB is going to kick MS out of the way if MS doesn't get moving with some updates. The consumers won't wait for a yearly update or one fix a quarter. MS needs to get ahead of the curve to have a chance and stay there.

couldn't have said it better myself

 

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

MS needs to get off their collective a$$es and get moving. If they want to put out half baked, Swiss cheese software they better be prepared to fix more than one problem a quarter. BB is going to kick MS out of the way if MS doesn't get moving with some updates. The consumers won't wait for a yearly update or one fix a quarter. MS needs to get ahead of the curve to have a chance and stay there.

Ok then, time for the think big, REALLY big mentality to kick in again. 2'000'000'000'000'000'000'000'000'000'000'000'000'000'000'000'000'000 fixes/new features a nanosecond, every nanosecond, without fail.

 

[Mystictrust]

I believe it is also your email. Change it to sync only 7 days.

I don't think that's it. My sync settings for 2 out of 3 email accounts were 30 days when I ran out of space and other was over 4 Gb. After that initial hard reset, I kept email sync at 30 days. My Other is at a respectable 2 Gb level, it's been a few weeks since then, and I still have a month worth of email synced. Mind you, despite this being the Lumia 920 forum, I have a Lumia 810 with 8 Gb (and an sd card to hold my music + pictures) so it's not like I filled my phone with every app on the marketplace - I only have 1.07 Gb in apps. I shouldn't have run out of space.

What I DID notice was that while misc things seem to enter the other category it seems they don't actually delete themselves - THAT I believe is what the bug is (I've deleted my IE + maps + search history and anything else I could find... but there never is a drastic change and it's always a small drop). I understand the phone uses things for cache, temp files, and whatever else doesn't fit in the other categories - I have no issues with that. But if there is no easy way to remove that misc stuff then there seems to be a problem

I sent myself an email with 12 attachments of large photos. I went into the email and downloaded each photo. I monitored the other space and it had gone up after downloading all attachments. Once downloading the attachments, you can then save them... which I did. After saving the photos, pictures + video went up. Other remained the same... so I deleted the email entirely, resynced my account, and made sure that email was no longer on the servers. My other STILL remained the same - it did not go down. The attachment data seems to be now stuck in Other.

I don't think I'll be downloading email attachments through my WP from now on. I know that wasn't my initial problem though - that was the first time I tried downloading an email attachment from my phone anyway.

 

[johninsj]

My other STILL remained the same - it did not go down. The attachment data seems to be now stuck in Other.

Eventually, when the mail falls off the 30 day window, it will disappear from the disk and "Other". It's possible Microsoft could add a compact mailbox action. It's possible they could add a "memory cleanup" option (like disk cleanup on Windows) to flush logs, backups, temp data, etc. and compact databases on the device. They probably will. In the meantime, it is what it is - other memory you're using for various files, along with temp cruft that should eventually get recycled.

You'll never see an Android-style memory/disk explorer because that doesn't fit the app model of WP8. If you want that, you'll need to go with Android.

On iOS, "Other" can balloon up too - my iPhone was up to about 10GB. The compact/delete temp/toss logs action in iOS happens when you reboot the device, which I did to reclaim the space. It's not, as you note, rocket science - it just has to be added to the startup actions in WP8.

 

[Mystictrust]

Eventually, when the mail falls off the 30 day window, it will disappear from the disk and "Other".

I just find it odd functionality, particularly if I've deleted the email which held the attachments in the first place.

So iOS deletes/compacts everything on reboot? Seems like a simple way to do it, particularly if MS doesn't want to implement a way for people to manually delete. I like it

 

[lippidp]

There is no excuse for storage being claimed that cannot be immediately reclaimed. Period. End of story. This is a bug and/or bad design. I am most definitely going to wait for this to be resolved before getting a WP8.

 

[Keith Wallace]

Mine is currently at 4.21 GB of data, and I'm convinced it HAS to be related to the number of installed apps. I'm sure a chunk of it is related to Nokia Maps (I have 251.3 MB of maps installed on my phone), but that's it. I just went (after looking at the size of "Other") and deleted my browsing, search, and maps history like was suggested, along with resetting my camera and Office. It dropped it to an exact 4.00 GB, so there is SOME blame there. However, that is still 4.00 GB that's not fully accounted for.

I've got the 251.3 MB of data from my installed maps (of IL and MOP), but I don't know about the rest. I have a Lumia 920 though, and am at 5.32 GB of free space, so I am not too concerned about a storage crunch, but I'm pretty sure it has been mentioned that uninstalled apps leave something behind before, so I am wondering if we need something like Android, where you can manually go in and delete all data related to a specific app.

Whatever the cause, they definitely need to give people the ability to see what it is. I have a lot of games on my phone, but their saves should not make up 3+ GB when the probably 50+ games on my Xbox 360 probably don't take up that much.

So, update on this:

I deleted all of the music on my phone. I foolishly did not check my "Other" section after doing so. However, after I cleared it all off, I overloaded my phone with music (meaning I tried to add MANY more songs than it could hold). My "Other" section is now down from 4.00 GB to 2.63 GB. So, either deleting all of my music or overloading the storage on the phone definitely helped get the storage taken by "Other" to drop by more than a gig.

 

[Kei Square]

VOTE HERE

http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/f...ves-the-wp8-user-a-tool-to-clean-up-his-phone

 

[z33dev33l]

That's your apps and app data... To quote the early windows phone commercials, "... Really?"

 

[Kei Square]

That's your apps and app data... To quote the early windows phone commercials, "... Really?"

really? all 11 gigs of it?

 

[uselessrobot]

Sounds like a solution here would be a file explorer. The main reason I'd like one is to be sure that uninstalled apps have actually been cleared out properly. A big annoyance I've had through the years is uninstalling an app and finding it's folder and miscellaneous files still present. I noticed this annoying tendency even on my old Android phone. It was a persistent problem because every time there were updates I started getting warnings that I was running out of space.

I have this vision of storage space, which is at a premium on these devices, slowly being eroded thanks to sloppy developers. So it would be nice to be able to browse around and delete junk that's been left behind.

 

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

Sounds like a solution here would be a file explorer. The main reason I'd like one is to be sure that uninstalled apps have actually been cleared out properly. A big annoyance I've had through the years is uninstalling an app and finding it's folder and miscellaneous files still present. I noticed this annoying tendency even on my old Android phone. It was a persistent problem because every time there were updates I started getting warnings that I was running out of space.

I have this vision of storage space, which is at a premium on these devices, slowly being eroded thanks to sloppy developers. So it would be nice to be able to browse around and delete junk that's been left behind.

As far as I know, the app data is all stored in its own sandboxed area, and when you uninstall the app, the OS fries that sandboxed area. It doesn't give you the space back though, oddly enough.

 

[JonesCK1]

Check:

-Have you downloaded maps for Nokia Drive? if you went with "All Regions" that means a whopping 2.6GB of disc space.
-Do you have Nokia Trailers? Have you downloaded any trailers to keep on your device?
-Do you use Nokia Music? Have you set any mixes for Offline listening? 4 mixed stations at ~200mb can add up.
-Do you have Youtube downloader? you may have forgotten about those HD downloads that can add up to gigs.
-Do you have Timelapse Pro which can fill your "Other" space quite quickly, I had a Timelapse video of 3GB. Camera easy is another one.
-Do you have Snes8x and forgot about all the roms stored on your phone, those will show up as "Other" as well.

I also got nearly a gig back just by deleting my browsing history. Settings -> Applications -> Internet Explorer -> Delete History. Also click Advanced and check Manage Storage to see if any sites have stored anything on your phone.

 

[conanheath]

Odd. I cleared all my cached data 2 or 3 days ago and did a soft reset afterward. It went from 5.2 to 5.1 GB at that time. Now, thus morning, I am showing 2.47gb all of the sudden. Is memory monitor as bad as battery monitor or what? Still confused, but with everything going on in phone I can understand 2.47gb of misc data. Well, I can live with it.

 

[polomint]

Mine is at 3.96GB. This is on a phone that is less than a week old. Nokia Europe map is installed and about 20gb of music. There is nothing else installed by me except a few games.

 

[Setup]

Perhaps this is something to begin with... Latest Nokia Lumia 920 firmware offers fix for ?Other? storage issue
Latest Nokia Lumia 920 firmware offers fix for “Other” storage issue | WMPoweruser