Database Info

Folder Structures in SDCARD

Hi everybody!
I just got my 1st Android Devide (DHD) and already root, clockwork, changed rom, etc. However, my problem is related to the directories structures inside my SDCARD.
I have 2 questions:
1- I moved some apps that I have in my main memory to my SDCARD via App Settings. However, when I go to my sdcard in windows explorer, I don't find these files. I'm not sure then if is really moving to my sdcard. I just realized some new folders, but they are empty. Does anyone knows what I'm doing wrong?
2- The second question it's linked with the first. I would like to organize in my SDCARD a nice folder structure. Something like:
/
/Songs/
/Photos/
/Documents/
/Backups/
/Games/
/Apps/
And then if you go inside the Apps folder, you have another folder with the name of the application. Pretty much like Program Files folder in Windows.
Is this possible? For Songs, Photos, Documents, I created a folder and it worked. But what about for apps and games that I got on the market?
My SDCARD has also a lot of folder/files that were copied when I put the sdcard on the device. I don't know if I can delete that. Any idea?
Thanks for the help in advance!

Moved to Q&A, not dev related.

Anyone?
Any tip?

[Q] What are the files inside .android_secure?

i seem to have over 1 GB of wasted space in that folder .android_secure
any 1 got a clue if those are safe to delete?

I've never found that deleting anything on my SD card caused major problems for the phone, including .android_secure. Of course, that folder has never been 1 GB in size for me, either, so I suppose your results may vary. Really, though, all the system stuff is in the protected internal storage, so I doubt you'll do much worse than delete media files or whatever apps you've moved to the SD card, if that. I say give it a shot and see what happens. Of course, I take no responsibility for anything that does go wrong if you do. >.>

apparently those are Apps settings or something along the lines
i flashed SuperAOS and during the wiping process it showed it was deleting .android_secure

App2sd
This is where the operating system stores a portion of the apps. Anytime you install a new app and choose to install it to the SD card, it puts a large portion of the app into this folder. Deleting the contents would delete your apps.

If you move an app to the SD card via the official (2.2+) method, this is where (most of it) goes.

Hi,
I recently flashed a new ROM and had to do a full wipe including factory reset. I copied some apps to SD, and indeed I see that the .android_secure folder has a lot in it, taking up space. I installed all apps again from market on the new ROM install, and they all say they can be copied to SD again, so they don't take information from the previously installed bits on the SD card. Is it safe to delete everything in this folder?
EDIT: I have an HTC Hero, but only noticed when I posted this that this is a Samsung Nexus S thread. I'm guessing that this is not that big a deal?

mikebel3 said:
This is where the operating system stores a portion of the apps. Anytime you install a new app and choose to install it to the SD card, it puts a large portion of the app into this folder. Deleting the contents would delete your apps.
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Click to collapse
sorry to revive this thread after so long, but does this folder also store the app data? In other words, for games like plants vs zombies or angry birds etc, if I copy the corresponding files over to my new phone (after installing PVZ/AB on the new phone of course), does it also copy over my progress?
(recently swapped my EVO 4G to EVO 3D and trying to figure out how to copy the game progress over - esp for PVZ)

jj14 said:
(recently swapped my EVO 4G to EVO 3D and trying to figure out how to copy the game progress over - esp for PVZ)
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Click to collapse
Titanium Backup?

suksit said:
Titanium Backup?
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Click to collapse
Isn't that only for rooted phones?

[Q] How to view what is in LOST.DIR and can i delete its content?

On my android device i have folder named LOST.DIR which size is about 2 GB. I know it is some kind of recycle bin, but can i delete its content to free some space and how can i view whats in it?

dino10 said:
On my android device i have folder named LOST.DIR which size is about 2 GB. I know it is some kind of recycle bin, but can i delete its content to free some space and how can i view whats in it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its the files you have deleted when using your phone. Just delete it, or all files in it.

[email protected] said:
Its the files you have deleted when using your phone. Just delete it, or all files in it.
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Click to collapse
Ok, so that means i can safely delete it, thanks. But is there any way to view those files?

dino10 said:
Ok, so that means i can safely delete it, thanks. But is there any way to view those files?
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Click to collapse
They seems to be just renamed and moved after a system boot.
if you cant open it, they are probably binary files. if they where photos/music you could just open them I think.

I tried this method and it did not work. After flashing cm10.2 I have a problem with my internal memory space, I have about 220 mb free space but I don't have many apps on my phone, just a few ones and they are small. So I am searching for solutions and I deleted lost.dir that situated on my external SD. That was the only lost.dir that I found. Any suggestions?

[Q] Space not freed after messing with .thumbnails

Heya guys,
this is mostly a copy of a thread I created in a device-specific forum (original thread), but since nobody was able to answer the question there and considering it doesn't seem to be device-specific after all, I figured I'd go ahead and ask here as well. The copy & paste part begins here, with slight modifications:
A few days ago, I found that I was in dire need of some more free space on my Samsung Galaxy S4 / GT-I9505's internal storage and found that only the contents of /sdcard/DCIM/.thumbnails were taking up space. After a while of trying to get rid of those files that kept creating themselves again, I followed some advice I read on an Android forum: I deleted the contents of the .thumbnail folder, went to Settings -> Apps and cleared the data of the Gallery and Media Storage apps, respectively, before rebooting the phone.
The contents did disappear for good, but neither Total Commander nor the list of installed apps in the settings nor the Storage summary in the settings showed any different amount of free space than before. To make matters worse, the number didn't even change after I found and deleted about 1 GB of files left by an already uninstalled app, i.e. it seems to be stuck on that value. At the same time, SD Maid tells me that I should have a good 5 GB of free space more than the system is showing. Neither restarting nor wiping the cache and dalvik cache helped.
My rooted GT-I9505 is running this unofficial port of AOKP 4.3, Milestone 1, and version 6.15.6 of PhilZ/CWM Advanced. I'm not sure whether there's more information I might need to provide, other than that the size of the thumbnails files apparently exploded (about 4 GB) when I moved quite a lot of data and obb folders to my external storage using FolderMount.
I didn't find any information about this kind of problem anywhere and am afraid I messed up so badly that I might need to reflash...or worse. Do you have an idea how I can try to fix it?

You could try installing Disable Service and forcing the media indexing service to never run.

gordon1986 said:
You could try installing Disable Service and forcing the media indexing service to never run.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the input! That sounds like a plan, but I'm not really sure whether I'm doing it right. I got the app, figured the media indexing service had to be found in the Media Storage app's entry, but I only found "MediaScannerService" and "MtpService" there. Since I try to be more careful now, I'd rather not deactivate any of those without being sure that it is what I am aiming for.
So, long story short: Is either of those the media indexing service or do I have to look somewhere else?

Best thing to do is delete the .thumbnails folder in DCIM folder. After this create a new file with the name .thumbnails in the DCIM folder.
Note: You have too delete .thumbnails FOLDER and create .thumbnails FILE. You can use es file explorer to do this.
It is based on the simple principle that in Linux ext file system a file and folder cannot have the same name.
Sent from my LT28at using xda app-developers app
Hit Thanks if this helped you.

osamaanjum said:
Best thing to do is delete the .thumbnails folder in DCIM folder. After this create a new file with the name .thumbnails in the DCIM folder.
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While I wasn't sure it would help, I tried what you suggested. Alas, it didn't work; the .thumbnails folder is empty without freeing the space taken by its former contents since I did what I described in my original post, after all. However, should I manage to fix this problem with a reflash, I suppose I'll do just that, replacing the folder with an empty file of the same name. Thanks.

It works for me.
I 've uploaded the image of DCIM directory (folder). In place of .thumbnails folder you can notice .thumbnails file.

Empty directories

Hi. I need to find all empty dirs in the specific dirs, so I started google that question and found following:
1. "find" on android doesn't work with "-empty" arg.
2. Google shows me some play store apps, which should find empty dirs, but they delete ALL of them right away on the whole system (or Android dir) and some of them can't even see SD card, but in my case I only need found them only, not auto delete.
So how one can find all empty dirs on android ?

Xda801 said:
Hi. I need to find all empty dirs in the specific dirs, so I started google that question and found following:
1. "find" on android doesn't work with "-empty" arg.
2. Google shows me some play store apps, which should find empty dirs, but they delete ALL of them right away on the whole system (or Android dir) and some of them can't even see SD card, but in my case I only need found them only, not auto delete.
So how one can find all empty dirs on android ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use an app called "Empty Folder Cleaner" on Google Play store. It's never deleted a folder that couldn't easily be re-written by a seldom used app. Been using for over a year now with no problems. Ad-Free, too.
Only catch, is you can't do your SD card w/o root access. Internal storage works fine though, (non-root)
Description by the app publisher;
Annoyed with loads of empty folders in your file manager? Use this app.
Key Features
1)Multiple options to delete empty folders
2)Delete empty folders from internal storage(No root required)
3)Delete empty folders from external storage/memory card(Root required for this feature only)
4)No advertisement
With a single click all the empty folders will be deleted.
Options to delete empty folders
1)Show progress - get the progress of which file is being checked for empty folders
2)Log deleted empty folders - get the list of all the empty folders deleted
3)Scan ANDROID created folders - will not delete empty folders from the directories /Android/data, /LOST.DIR, /DCIM
Note: folders with ".nomedia" and other hidden files will not be deleted as they might be required by the system or the app which has created it. Developer is not responsible for any problem created by the app. You use the application at your own risk
Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

darth_vapor said:
I use an app called "Empty Folder Cleaner" on Google Play store. It's never deleted a folder that couldn't easily be re-written by a seldom used app. Been using for over a year now with no problems. Ad-Free, too.
Only catch, is you can't do your SD card w/o root access. Internal storage works fine though, (non-root)
Description by the app publisher;
Annoyed with loads of empty folders in your file manager? Use this app.
Key Features
1)Multiple options to delete empty folders
2)Delete empty folders from internal storage(No root required)
3)Delete empty folders from external storage/memory card(Root required for this feature only)
4)No advertisement
With a single click all the empty folders will be deleted.
Options to delete empty folders
1)Show progress - get the progress of which file is being checked for empty folders
2)Log deleted empty folders - get the list of all the empty folders deleted
3)Scan ANDROID created folders - will not delete empty folders from the directories /Android/data, /LOST.DIR, /DCIM
Note: folders with ".nomedia" and other hidden files will not be deleted as they might be required by the system or the app which has created it. Developer is not responsible for any problem created by the app. You use the application at your own risk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, this is one of the apps I found, but it is not what I need, as I said in the first post.
Sent from my santoni using XDA Labs