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By David Rothman

imageWith eight gigs of storage on my iPod Touch, just how could I be running out of space for e-books and other items? Less than half a gig remained. I could not even sync properly to the iTunes on my desktop.

For some reason, items in the “Other” category—see screen image—were about to crowd out the e-books and podcasts I cherished. Just which files? All system related?

Googling around, I found I could use the “Restore” function to deal with Other. My fellow Touch owner, Chris Meadows, confirmed this. But I still wondered if all my e-books and apps would be preserved when I did a restoration later on from my desktop iTunes.

All e-books apparently safe after a restore

Just what happened after the restoration process, which lasted several hours? Don’t hate me if you’re not successful, I still think there could be risks, but yes, all my e-books appear to have survived, even the problematic DRMed ones.

The sole hassle was that I had to reinstall eReader. But not only did eReader show up again, it even took me back to the page of a book I’d been reading. Stanza and related books were also fine. The screenshot above shows is storage use after the fix.

Yes, the storage problem had affected podcasts more than e-books, which take up less room. But I still worried about the sync hassles.

Microsoft-style hassle

So there you go. Every now and then you can succeed by doing the obvious. It seemingly worked out here. While I haven’t tested the restore on an e-book-laden iPhone, the same concepts should most likely apply.

I’ll welcome thoughts from other readers, and meanwhile I hope that Apple can address the “Other” problem. Am I right in thinking that “Other” was mostly junk from the system? A little in common with Microsoft OSes?

Coming up: Paul Biba on why he’s toting around a Nokia as his main phone rather than an iPhone, despite the excitement over the latter as an e-book platform.

 
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