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Am I the only one that finds this absurd? (lemmy.yachts)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/apple_enthusiast@lemmy.world
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Is there anything I can do about this extremely vague block of data that’s taking up 30% of my phone’s storage? Mind you, this isn’t the operating system itself, as that’s listed as its own category.

EDIT: I tried (a) backing up to my computer, factory resetting, then restoring from backup and (b) setting the date years in the future. Neither worked, in fact (a) actually increased my system data to 34 GB! What DID end up working was updating my iOS from 18 to 26, which I had to do from my computer via iTunes since my phone was full. Apparently major system updates reset system data

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[+] -16 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Unused storage is wasted storage. The system will free up space when other apps require it.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    That's more for ram than SSD. Unnecessary ssd use wears it out.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Only for write operations. Reads are effectively free, and cached files are invariably predominantly read heavy.
    Even then, the wear effects of writes on SSDs are exaggerated. Improvements in the technology and wear leveling have made them roughly as reliable as spinning disk.

    For a phone, the storage is expected to remain viable beyond the expected usage lifetime of the device. It doesn't really matter if caching wears storage a little faster if the device is inoperable before it's a problem.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    If you’re lucky it will clear it. There were some folks complaining that they couldn’t install a system update because there “wasn’t enough room” according to the update process. This despite caches that could be cleared or apps that could be unloaded.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Indeed; my system data is currently at 17.78GB, I have 21GB free, and the last OS update still required me to offload a bunch of apps to free up enough space to install—despite there ALSO being a 10GB reserve for OS updates.

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