04-02-2012, 04:49 AM

In less than a year I've somehow managed to nearly reach the 5 gb limit for free iCloud service using my iPad and iPhone. Just got an automated email from Apple. I was trying to run minimal use of iCloud, backing up the necessities to iCloud, using it to keep my contacts, calendar and mail in sync, and leaving photos and music on my iMac. Hope I can manage the settings to stay within 5 gb, which seems like a lot for the minimum I want to use iCloud for.

I checked the backup settings on both devices: the main culprit was Camera Roll. I need to be more careful about removing photos from the Roll and saving them on my iMac. That freed up a lot of space.

04-02-2012, 05:33 AM

I'm very confused by this post, and am curious about how you reached the 5GB limit as well, as so little counts against it.

iTunes purchases don't count, Photo Stream doesn't count, etc. I think what you are saying above is that you also have iCloud backing up your iOS devices so therefore it backs up the Camera Roll as well, so yes that could possibly be an issue if you are very tardy about transferring the pictures.

Your email storage also counts, so maybe that's another issue. I have mine set up so that once my email client (Mail on my Mac) moves an email out of the inbox (into a folder for example), then it's also removed from the server. This keeps my inbox from getting too large (I also archive inbox mail every half-year or so). This seems to have the effect of not allowing the inbox to eat up undue space on iCloud.

04-02-2012, 06:50 PM

Yes, I am backing up my iDevices to iCloud. There is a small database for each of most of the apps. I have a number of PDFs in GoodReader which get backed up and that takes half a MB. The Keynote presentations are hefty too. But it was the Camera Roll on each iDevice that caused the problems. I have cleaned them out and I'm back down to less than 2 GB used now out of the 5 GB free limit. Should be able to go for a very long time without bumping the 5 GB limit again now.

The advantage of backing the databases up to iCloud is that if I lose an iDevice on the road I can buy a new one, then restore the apps from iTunes and restore the databases from iCloud. I just won't have my music and photos until I get home again, but that's no big deal.

04-03-2012, 02:47 AM

I see, thanks for that.

I back up my iPad to my computer because that's how I had it set up with my original iPad before iCloud could do that, but my iPhone is backed up via iCloud. So far, no issues.