Tell me more ×
Ask Different is a question and answer site for power users of Apple hardware and software. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 5 down vote favorite

No, this isn't a "who's buried in Grant' tomb" question. Rather: How much space for apps, music, etc is available on a fresh-out-of-the-box 16GB iPad? My 64GB iPad says that its "capacity" is 58.12 GB, which suggests that almost 8GB is taken up by disk formatting and the OS. That wouldn't leave much for other stuff on a 16GB. I'm providing "pre-sales tech support" for a price-sensitive relative; any data out there? Thanks!

share|improve this question
The simple pre-sales advice can be decided on how likely iTunes Match can solve a music storage issue as well as hoe much video playback / iMovie editing and video capture the owner will want. Any one of these can make the 32G model well worth the up charge. No to all, and save the money. – bmike♦ Dec 9 '11 at 1:15
@bmike Why does 64 GB leaves me with 58 GB (a decrease of 8 GB) but 16 GB leaves 13 GB (a decrease of only 3 GB) What are stored there? There's root partition that's should be same size for both capacity and maybe partition table and stuff. But why would it take this much storage on a 64 GB device? – Shane Hsu Feb 14 at 17:07
My guess is there are three items "taking up the space" My 64 GB iPad has 57.18 GB free. Why not ask a follow up question about this and link to it in chat so I can see it and respond more fully? – bmike♦ Feb 14 at 17:13

2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

On iOS 5 you should expect to have about 13.75 GB for items you choose to store on any 16 GB iOS device. On iOS 4 it was slightly higher - slightly over 14 GB.

share|improve this answer
Thanks; that sounds about right. I just got off a textchat with somebody at store.apple.com, who said that only about 1 GB was taken up by the os and pre-installed apps; that strikes me as a bit low. Dunno... – Jim Miller Dec 9 '11 at 0:20
1  
I would agree that the install image itself might be 1 GB, but that's different than usage when deployed and running as well as the space taken by empty directories and cushion for things like Garbage Collection / swap? / whatever else ends up taking space like music database files and such. – bmike♦ Dec 9 '11 at 1:13
up vote 0 down vote

On iOS 6.0.1, iPad 4, I started with 13.3 GB. It depends on your iCloud sync as well. But as I see, you need at least 2.5 GB of free space which means that you will have a number around 13.5 too.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.