This article was taken from the June 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Keep your tablet's hard drive unclogged by following four simple steps.
Reduce song sizes iTunes offers a handy new feature that will compress any songs on your iPad bigger than 128kbps to an AAC format, which will help free up space. Plug your iPad <span class="s3">into a computer and open iTunes. Three-quarters of the way down the Summary page is a check-box with the above option.
Tick that and iTunes does the rest -- and yes, your music will still sound fine.
Manage your apps
Check which apps are gobbling up space. Go to Settings > General > Usage; here you can see how much of your hard drive is being taken up and delete or remove anything you're no longer using. With magazine subscription apps, you can archive old issues and redownload them as and when you need to.
Maximise iCloud space
Apple gives users 5GB of free iCloud storage to help keep your iPad free of clutter. However, iCloud makes copies of all your apps, which eats into <span class="s3">storage. To see what is being stored, go to Settings
> iCloud > Storage & Backup > Manage Storage. Now you can see what's taking up space and delete them or turn off the backup option.
Carry a portable server
If you like to carry your video library around with you at all times, there are a number of portable, Wi-Fi-enabled hard drives that allow you to stream films to your iPad while on the move. The Seagate GoFlex Satellite Mobile Drive has 500GB of storage and allows three separate devices to access content on the drive at any one time.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
