Is there anything I can do about this extremely vague block of data that’s taking up 30% of my phone’s storage? Mind you, this isn’t the operating system itself, as that’s listed as its own category.
EDIT: I tried (a) backing up to my computer, factory resetting, then restoring from backup and (b) setting the date years in the future. Neither worked, in fact (a) actually increased my system data to 34 GB! What DID end up working was updating my iOS from 18 to 26, which I had to do from my computer via iTunes since my phone was full. Apparently major system updates reset system data
That’s more for ram than SSD. Unnecessary ssd use wears it out.
Also, it’s not true for RAM either. The OS will automatically cache files as it sees fit. Helps with video players and the like.
how does that mean it’s not true for RAM tho? caching is about the time it takes to (compute and) load things into the RAM and RAM r/w operations are pretty much always faster than disk
Because the people that say “unused RAM is wasted RAM” have zero understanding of what file caching is and think that RAM only includes program data.
file caching is making use of unused ram which is what people mean by “unused ram is wasted ram”. you are saying the same thing.
Only for write operations. Reads are effectively free, and cached files are invariably predominantly read heavy.
Even then, the wear effects of writes on SSDs are exaggerated. Improvements in the technology and wear leveling have made them roughly as reliable as spinning disk.
For a phone, the storage is expected to remain viable beyond the expected usage lifetime of the device. It doesn’t really matter if caching wears storage a little faster if the device is inoperable before it’s a problem.
the SSD is not necessarily being “used” (written to) more here. The issue is that data isn’t being cleared when OP wants, but that doesn’t cause wear.