What is the easiest way to reclaim HD space on an ipad2 without having to sync? Ideally I'm looking for an app that would allow me to delete files directly from the iPad (I remember there was one for the Newton that did this quite well, yes I'm old).
IOS – Reclaiming hard drive space in iPad
iosipad
Related Solutions
Look at the iOS app GoodReader. GoodReader is a $5 app that allows you to transfer files from Windows, Mac OS X & Linux via WiFi to your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. You can then open the files in other apps based on the filetype.
The "Other" space is not necessarily unused as you imply. It could simply be your user data from your applications.
If you check in Settings > General > Usage you can gauge how much space your apps are using up including their data (might be photos, or podcasts, or pictures, or anything).
For example, my Instacast it taking up 406Mb of space, but the application is only 3.3Mb. So that's over 400Mb of "other" space taken up right there:
If you were to add up your the data in this list, then subtract the total amount of "application" usage from it, it should pretty much equate to the bulk of this "other" data. Of course, there are other things that are included as "Other", including your mail data, sms messages, internal log files and location data stores etc etc etc which may fluctuate over time but the big portion is just your apps contents.
Best Answer
I use the free iPhone Explorer to mount my iPod touch in the Finder, and I can find individual files and copy them to the Mac or delete them without using iTunes or syncing. It is supposed to work with iPad as well. Give it a try.