You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
I do not have enough space on my iPad to download a movie. I would like to purchase a new iPad, but it is not feasible at this time. My pictures, songs and "other" are taking up the most storage. Would you recommend purchasing a flash drive to store my photos to free up space?
iPad Air 2 Wi-Fi, Cellular
If your internal storage is full, your only option is to better manage the storage that you have - and delete unused Apps or unneeded data.
These support pages should prove to be helpful:
What's the difference between device storage and iCloud storage? – Apple Support
Manage your iCloud storage – Apple Support
How to check the storage on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch – Apple Support
Clear Other storage on your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support
External storage devices may be helpful for offloading data to which you do not require regular access - however, for the most part, this data cannot be directly accessed/viewed/edited/manipulated unless it is first copied back to the iPad. Despite optimistic marketing by Apple, iPad cannot replicate much of the flexibility of a traditional computer such as you may be attempting to make comparison.
Should you decide to investigate external USB Storage options you’ll require an Apple Lightning to USB3 Camera Adapter:
https://store.apple.com/uk/xc/product/MK0W2ZM/A
To provide sufficient power for the USB drive, you’ll need to connect a Power Adapter (charger) rated at least 12W to the auxiliary Lightning port of the Camera Adapter. The iPad, on its own, except for very low power devices, cannot supply adequate power for connected USB storage devices. The Power Adapter supplied with your iPad, with the appropriate cable, is likely to be adequate.
In all cases, your USB storage must have a single data partition - and be formatted as FAT32, exFAT or APFS. iPad cannot read multi-partition devices, or proprietary device formats (such as NTFS).
I hope this insight and information proves to be helpful to you - if only in promoting some additional though as to your needs. If you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
If your internal storage is full, your only option is to better manage the storage that you have - and delete unused Apps or unneeded data.
These support pages should prove to be helpful:
What's the difference between device storage and iCloud storage? – Apple Support
Manage your iCloud storage – Apple Support
How to check the storage on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch – Apple Support
Clear Other storage on your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support
External storage devices may be helpful for offloading data to which you do not require regular access - however, for the most part, this data cannot be directly accessed/viewed/edited/manipulated unless it is first copied back to the iPad. Despite optimistic marketing by Apple, iPad cannot replicate much of the flexibility of a traditional computer such as you may be attempting to make comparison.
Should you decide to investigate external USB Storage options you’ll require an Apple Lightning to USB3 Camera Adapter:
https://store.apple.com/uk/xc/product/MK0W2ZM/A
To provide sufficient power for the USB drive, you’ll need to connect a Power Adapter (charger) rated at least 12W to the auxiliary Lightning port of the Camera Adapter. The iPad, on its own, except for very low power devices, cannot supply adequate power for connected USB storage devices. The Power Adapter supplied with your iPad, with the appropriate cable, is likely to be adequate.
In all cases, your USB storage must have a single data partition - and be formatted as FAT32, exFAT or APFS. iPad cannot read multi-partition devices, or proprietary device formats (such as NTFS).
I hope this insight and information proves to be helpful to you - if only in promoting some additional though as to your needs. If you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
This, regrettably, does not resolve the OPs issue with Photos occupying space locally on the iPad. When using Photos in iCloud, iCloud storage merely “mirrors” the locally stored Photos.
Whilst iCloud can store the full resolution Photos - and the iPad be configured to only keep a lower resolution copy of the original photo - using iCloud for photo storage can at best only marginally reduce the space required. iCloud photos is not an archive repository.
Other Cloud storage providers can provide alternative storage to which Photos can be moved - however, as already outlined, photos transferred off the iPad cannot be directly accessed unless copied back to the iPad.
Thanks for your reply, it was very informative. I deleted and offloaded a number of apps, deleted old e-mails I've been saving and emptied my trash bin which hasn't been emptied in quite awhile. I now have enough space to download a movie.
I can recommend You to buy space in iCloud! It's very cheap way to get space!
Check this Apple Supprot page:
Thanks. I have bought space in the cloud a few years ago.
Not Enough iPad Storage
