Buying more storage for iPad 2

[Doshusallie]

Hi,

I am trying to download quite a few movies on my iPad ready for a holiday. It told me I had insufficient space so went into storage and purchased another 10gb on iCloud. It doesn't seem to have made any difference to downloading the movies - is this because I haven't increased the space on the physical device, only what space I have backing stuff up to cloud? Is there a way to increase the space I have on the actual iPad?????

Tia

I don't think it's possible, officially. Might manage to find a reseller or some sort who will do it for you.

Is there a way to increase the space I have on the actual iPad?????

The answer is no.

Buying additional space in iCloud does not mean you can store more movies on your actual ipad.

You may want to look at what format you are downloading the movies in and how big they are. I've travelled with a 16GB ipad and stored loads of movies.

You may want to run them through a convertor like Handbrake. Using that I can usually get a TV show of 40 mins into about 200MB and a film to around 500-600MB. That's a lot of movies on a 16GB iPad.

Of course it also depends on how many apps/music/photos you are also storing.

No, sorry I don't think you'll get more stored in the iPad, it is a MAJOR disadvantage of Apple products. Most other devices these days allow for microSD cards (Sony used something else for a while on their phones) for additional storage, but good old Apple seals it all up and to get bigger, you have to buy newer model /bigger model (if there is a model with more).

In your case, you may be lucky if the place you are travelling to has free Wi-Fi as you'd be able to pull your files stored on the Cloud onto the iPad. Just don't tell them what you want to use the wi-fi for (but do check they don't have some tiny limit per day and charge for extra traffic).

Clearly you will need to copy some existing files onto your paid-for Cloud storage and then delete from the iPad to 'make space' for other things you want to download. I'd suggest copying to the Cloud, then making a backup on a laptop/desktop from your Cloud storage (you may not be able to 'play' these files on that laptop/desktop but you can probably make a copy for safety) before deleting from the iPad.

That way anything you've downloaded on the iPad now is backed up not just on the Cloud but another machine you own. When you download more films, you can go through a similar process - copy to the Cloud as well, and from the Cloud to other storage. It seems reasonable to make a backup of anything you have bought and I'd hope there are no rules preventing it (I don't use iTunes - I tend to have MP3 files for music, and .avi etc for films, which can be played on all my machines without being tied to a specific account / device).

If you think of the films you have already as 'Group A' then copy that group to the Cloud, then from Cloud to another machine, and then, with something you no longer need, you should be able to delete a single item from the iPad and load it back again from the Cloud.

If you call the films you want to download, 'Group B', then remember that unless you can back them up onto the Cloud storage, too, deleting any of them (to make space for you to download and then view one of the 'Group A' films means that whatever you delete may be gone forever (or do you have the right to download it again if you just bought it?)

Thanks all very much.

Yes where we are going has wifi, so I will just have to delete from device and download from cloud. I do back up to cloud automatically very regularly. I had to reset my iPad recently back to basics and all my purchased tv shows and movies were all still on the cloud. I have never backed up to another computer or anything....

How do I find out what size iPad I have?

To find out what size iPad you have, look in Settings, General, Usage. It will say Storage amount available and amount used. Add those figures together and you roughly get the size of iPad.

So in my case: 6.3GB Available, 7.4GB used = 13.7GB My iPad is 16GB. I would guess that the storage you can't see a figure for is what is used by the operating system, iOS.

It says I have 13.8 used, none available....