Storage details - other category

[TheXFather]

Re: What about the "Other" storage section ?

i just restart my phone today and i got 350 mb back(no update)
EDIT: i got and 8s with 4gb from 70 mb free to 420 mb free with one RESTART (not reset)

 

[SaucePolicy]

Re: What about the "Other" storage section ?

Here is another piece of the "Other" mystery. I chatted with a MS support agent today. I recently got so fed up with my bloated Other storage that I reset my phone and started over from scratch. This time I noted the size of Other as I did different things on the phone. Well after adding 964 MP3 files, I noticed the Other storage increased dramatically. Specifically, 6.67 GB of MP3's were added which were accounted for correctly in Music/Videos. However "Other" increased by 590MB. About 95% of these files have album art embedded in the ID3 tags. It turns out, Windows Phone can't display the embedded album art, it has to extract it and display it as an image file which gets stored in Other. If you have lots of different singles instead of full albums, they each need their own album art image. Still it seems like a lot of space needed for such a tiny album art at an average of 612KB per album art image. It would be nice if Windows Phone could resize/compress this image after it extracts it. Looks like I'll be going back through my music collection and locating smaller album art.

TL;DR: Extracted album art goes in "Other". Lots of different album art = more "Other" storage space used.

 

[sanders2232]

This is strange, hopefully doesn't affect my memory for pictures and videos....guess I'll just utilize SkyDrive.

 

[GReeN SCoRPioN 8K]

Re: What about the "Other" storage section ?

Ok here's my Story (sorry for the Bad English i try my best!)

After 2 Years of WP7 i also Jumped as fast as i could to WP8 with a 8GB Lumia 820 cause 920 was here in Germany Sold Out Everywhere.
I thought i could live with it cause i used a 32 GB Micro SD card for Media Files. After Installing my Apps i still had enough free Internal Space but the Other was Growing and growing... At the End i only had ~ 750 MB free Internal.

Then the 920 was avaible and i made the Switch cause that was the Phone i wanted all the Time.

Now i have the Same again on my 920 (OK i have still enough free space but) the Others is really really getting big!

It looks like this:

Music & Videos: 2,46 GB
Pictures: 515,96 MB
Apps: 4,71 GB
Other: 5,39 GB (!!!)
System: 1,97 GB
Free: 14,09 GB

What i also want to Share is that i also noticed someting like this on my Lumia 800 WP 7.5 during the Year, Space (You could't see app, Media Others and so on) was always geting Lower and when i Uninstalled Games of ~ 500 Mb i did not get 500 MB back, truely 50 MB to Nothing. But after Some Days of Working (Reboot has not helped) as i checked Storage the Space was back again.

After reading this Thread i tested my Lumia 800 with 7.8 which is back from Repair since 3 Days. I Installed all my Apps and had about 4 GB Left. 1 Days Later it was about 5 GB. Today now it is 6 GB.

So some Error like this was also Happening to WP 7.X...

 

[sanders2232]

My other is up to 14gb...i backed all my pictures and videos to my PC and SkyDrive too. I have decent amount of apps but nothing crazy.

 

[augiewren]

Re: What about the "Other" storage section ?

Same problem here. Other is @ 5.6GB after getting podcasts. Deleted podcasts. Now 5.0GB. I can't use the phone for anything at this point.
C'mon Microsoft. Fix this. Let's not have this turn into a frustrating situation for us and a PR nightmare for you.

 

[E Lizzle]

Re: What about the "Other" storage section ?

I've really ramped down buying apps and games until this is resolved.

 

[sanders2232]

I just did a reset and now under 1gb...we shall see how it goes. I wonder if it had anything to do with the update that we all received.

The only thing I did alot was stream music using metroradio. Wonder if that caused this.

 

[AccentAE86]

Re: What about the "Other" storage section ?

Yeah this is driving me nuts too. My other is 6GB. I tried to install a 120MB app today, and it said I didn't have enough memory left, even though there was 950MB free. Huh? So I cleared out one of my 1GB movies, so I went up to 1.8GB free. Then I installed the app. After installing a 120MB app, I'm down to 880MB left? WTF?? Seriously? I totally don't understand this! How could my "other" grow by 1GB in a matter of minutes? Argh! This wouldn't be a problem if the 920 had an SD slot. Why oh why is the flagship phone missing such a basic and highly desired feature?

 

[zakkforchilli]

Re: What about the "Other" storage section ?

Something interesting happened today.... I RESYNCED all my music with iTunes via the Windows Phone app for Windows 7.

After deleting all the music and putting it back on, my OTHER file went from 10GB, down to about 6. Soooo weird. Album artwork is no way even a gig...

 

[sanders2232]

Ok guys after doing a reset and all I've pretty much done is take pictures. Pictures does increase your other storage.

 

[Sheikmans]

Anyone contacted MSFT about this issue yet?

 

[Morq]

Re: What about the "Other" storage section ?

Yes I also noticed that taking pictures (even tho they should be stored @ external card) does take additional space from other (like 2mbs for me, so probably pic is saved to others, copied to sd card, and copy from others is not deleted).
HOWEVER
Yesterday I had about 300mb of free space on my phone. For the night I left the app that records your sleep on. When I woke up I noticed that a low memory msged popped overnight, when I checked how much I have left... about 2gb was magically free-ed from others when phone reached low memory threshold.

 

[johnnylai]

Re: What about the "Other" storage section ?

despite cache, i think something with smartshoot?

 

[gpobernardo]

Re: What about the "Other" storage section ?

Ok guys after doing a reset and all I've pretty much done is take pictures. Pictures does increase your other storage.

Yes, I've been observing how this "other" storage section increases and decreases. I think this section has something to do with the preview features of the WP8 OS, i.e. the random images that show in the tiled photo and the background photo within the photo app. I added 1,000+ pictures to the micro SD card which was attached to my HTC Windows phone 8s. But even if the pictures were saved on the micro SD card, the free space of my phone still decreased... all the way to 68MB! I deleted the photos and it went back to 270+MB. Curious as I was, I repeated the same process and looked closer at the "Other" memory status. I watched it grow from around 720MB to around 820MB. At the same time, while it was "growing", the Albums in the Photo app were "updating". In the end, I deleted the photos again (since I could view them in my computer anyway) and restored my 270+MB free space.

I suppose some similar form of the caching happens for the videos, documents and other apps installed. Hope this one sheds light somewhere. We need a fix now!

 

[sanders2232]

Ya my "other" storage is over 1gb now just from taking pictures! I upload to SkyDrive then remove but it's still high. Definitely tied directly into the camera.

 

[R42]

Re: What about the "Other" storage section ?

My other in my phone is sitting at 4.18gb but when i go to check my phone through the WP app of windows 8 it shows 5.89gb.

Wow.
Before it was 2gb. ugh

 

[SaucePolicy]

Re: What about the "Other" storage section ?

Well I'm back up to 3.02 GB of wasted "Other" space after deleting my music and re-adding it, trying to fix the artist image not displaying problem. As a test, I actually extracted every single album art image from all my MP3's using Mp3tag. The total size of these images is 103 MB, yet the difference in other storage was 590 MB after adding music. So apparently music does something else to the Other folder besides just extracting the album art image like tech support said.

To me, this is getting ridiculous. What possible extra information could be necessary to just play MP3 files? I don't even have the benefit of the artist image displaying in the background, that hasn't worked since I did a hard reset. All metadata should be embedded in the ID3 tag. So what else could be wasting all my space? Doesn't microsoft realize the more storage they waste on our phones means the less apps we'll buy? To have to hard reset and wipe your phone to clear out temporary unnecessary files is absurd to me. Imagine if you had to re-install your OS every time you wanted to empty the Windows\temp folder? Microsoft would be laughed off the planet. Sorry for the rant...I've been going through the music sync/Other storage nightmare for the last week with no progress.

 

[Pikezer1337]

Re: What about the "Other" storage section ?

Well I'm back up to 3.02 GB of wasted "Other" space after deleting my music and re-adding it, trying to fix the artist image not displaying problem. As a test, I actually extracted every single album art image from all my MP3's using Mp3tag. The total size of these images is 103 MB, yet the difference in other storage was 590 MB after adding music. So apparently music does something else to the Other folder besides just extracting the album art image like tech support said.

To me, this is getting ridiculous. What possible extra information could be necessary to just play MP3 files? I don't even have the benefit of the artist image displaying in the background, that hasn't worked since I did a hard reset. All metadata should be embedded in the ID3 tag. So what else could be wasting all my space? Doesn't microsoft realize the more storage they waste on our phones means the less apps we'll buy? To have to hard reset and wipe your phone to clear out temporary unnecessary files is absurd to me. Imagine if you had to re-install your OS every time you wanted to empty the Windows\temp folder? Microsoft would be laughed off the planet. Sorry for the rant...I've been going through the music sync/Other storage nightmare for the last week with no progress.

You hit it right on the spot. Its CRAZY to have to imagine to do a reset just because temporary files won't clear. In the past week I have lost .3 GB of memory, without downloading one app... That's 300mb of what?

 

[laity78]

I have been wondering for some time now about the other storage myself. I have the 8x since the start of December an currently have 2.40GB in other. I search about this today an found this thread an read most of your thoughts. So all day after I have been doing anything on my 8x I have been checking the other in storage an what I have discovered is that its the Bing search. I realized that in the settings in internet explorer an then advanced there is never any files in where websites store data on your phone. Its storing it in other. Now I want to note I periodically clean up my history an cookies in Bing search an internet explorer. So here's the test I did try it for yourself to test it also. Delete your history in Bing an IE, go check your other memory, then go to Bing search, search something, the quickest way is to go to media an then images, swipe through the images til they end, go back let more load up an swipe through a few more. Now completely back out an close Bing. Go back in delete history an then go to internet explorer an delete your history. Now check your other under storage an I guarantee it went up a few megabytes. So what I believe is the internet files that r suppose to go to that folder where u can manage an delete them yourself aren't an r going to other storage in memory