So since most are concerned with the allmighty "SAVING OF internal SPACE". Here is a sort of NOOb guide for just that and some the options that go with it. Some of these most of you may know but there are also some tidbits that I have found out about through trial and error, (No relation to forum member "Try-And-Error").
Obviously there is app2sd (2.1), app2ext, app2card, link2sd, native froyo app2sd and just plain not installing a bunch of garbage apps. There are plenty of threads about these and their uses, so I won't go into them
But did you know that you can also free up some internal memory space by just basic maintenance? You can install a Cache Cleaner from the market. I use Cache Cleaner NG (root) and CacheMate (root) which will clear your cache for you, Cache Cleaner NG will even clear your cache on your SDcard. Open Root Explorer and if you see a bunch of free floating cache files, those need to go. Wasted space. Small in the scheme of your SDcard, but still wasted.
So here we go (best part is at the bottom though):
Ok so you go into XDA on your phone, go to the themes page and look at what and how people are theming their phones or see some pix of someone's SetCPU profiles. All those develop a cache that takes up space on your phone and if you don't get rid of it, you'll run out (I have had mine up to 54mb before). Now lets say that you go to the market and look through some apps or update your apps (more on this later). This also generates cache, usually up to 2-4mb. Ever try to download something from the market and it says something like "not enough space". This not needed cache may be some of the reason.
Here are some tricks and apps that some of you may know and also some tricks that I have found that I am sure most don't know about.
SOME GOOD LOW MEMORY APPS:
Cache Cleaner NG and Cache Mate (both root and free-Cache Mate has a paid but the free one works just fine.)
Diskusage (free) ~ this one will show you a graphical version of your /data/apps and also you SD card to show you exactly what is taking up so much space. You can click on that thing and hit "Show" and it will take you to the app's page in Manager Applications. It also has a root function too that will allow you to see what is in /system, /cache, /data,…
Some sort of file manager to get to some things I'll mention below. (I use Root Explorer)
SOME MEMORY CLEARING TIPS AND TRICKS:
Home Launcher ~ If you have a 3rd party home launcher, see if it has the ability to long-press an icon to take you to its screen in the Manage Apps section. I use ADWex and if you long-press on say Market, it takes me to the same place as is I were to go to Settings->Applications->Manage Apps->Market. Instead of all that, just long-press on the icon and BAM! it takes you there. Here you can clear out your cache for the market or delete the data (if you need to do that). Or clear the cache of the XDA app b/c you looked at too many pix.
Browsers ~ These develop cache that takes up memory and space, especially the stock browser. If you use a 3rd party, you can get the settings to clear cache, cookies, passwords,…on exit. I use Dolphin, but I am pretty sure that most have something like this on them. (side note: most 3rd party browsers once exited will not run in the background unlike the stuck one)
Media ~ So you download a bunch of mp3's from the net or click on some pix and save it to your SD card. Or maybe you just felt like wiping your card and having a fresh start. Every time you reboot, you phone will scan media. No big deal, but the more you criss-cross things from PC to phone and back again, it can create a bunch of double files in your media cache on the phone. With the proper placement of .nomedia files (this prevents your media scanner from doing just that, scanning media- i.e. pix, jpegs,…Don’t place a .nomedia in your music, album art or DCIM files**bad), Every once in a while, I'll hit the Diskusage or go to Manage apps and clear the media cache. Then I got to my file manager and the DCIM->Thumbs and delete the .Thumbnails files (should be 2). Unmount the SD card and remount to start the media scan, pull up the Gallery and wait for the thumbs to come back (depending on how many you have, this could take awhile). By doing this you can get almost 5 mb back if you have a bunch of double scans in your media folder.
AND NOW FOR SOME TIPS THAT MOST COULD NOT KNOW:
Lets say that you have your phone plugged into your PC and for some reason you, in a fit of rage, jerk the plug out without unmounting it first. This creates a file that is put into your LOST DIR folder on your SD card. Anytime you don't safely unmount the SD card, it will create a file in that folder. In the scheme of the SD card, it isn't too much, but I don't like having useless items free floating about.
So you are downloading an update from the market and for some reason your phone freezes and the Force close-Retry-Wait doesn't work out for you. You have to do a battery pull. Frustrating I know and the memory takes a hit too. Every time you have to do a battery pull because of a freeze up or something of the like, it creates a TOMBSTONE file in /data. These are useless and can be deleted. If you are flashing ROMs and are constantly having to do battery pulls b/c market crashes or an app freezes, then you are creating a Tombstone file.
**Here is where your file manager (with root) will help. Go into /data and scroll all the way to the bottom and open /tombstone. There should be some files in there and depending on how many there are, I could be a nice chunk of wasted memory. Just select all and delete. They are not needed. Your internal memory should go up by doing this.
Same scenario, but now go into /data/ cache or /cache and you'll see Dalvik-Cache (don’t mess with this), Lost & Found and Recovery. If you tried to download an app and it got frozen for some reason and had to do a battery pull, the apk will be free floating in there, uninstalled. You can delete this. While it isn't in the Dalvik-Cahce folder, it is taking up space. Once you are able to download something completely and correctly from the market, it will populate into Dex correctly and won't be a free radical, as I like to say.
Obviously this is not all encompassing, but just some things that I have found along the way that some of the newer people may not know and just wondered about. And as usual, always make back ups and I am not responsible.
p.s ~ Didn’t mean for this to be a manifesto-sized, but some of the things above needed scenarios to make sure you understand.
Wow very detailed. Thumbs up for the effort to explain to us!
Sent from my Milestone using XDA App
Just bookmarked it, very useful!
Related
So starting off with this phone I know it doesn't have the best internal storage. When apps are moved to the SD some of the app stays behind on the internal storage, I know that. I have had 2 shifts. My first one i dropped, cracked the screen, and the insurance gave me a new one. On my first shift at the time I had about 70mb of free space left when I sent it in. Before sending it I made a titanium backup and restored that on my shift I have today. When I restored it I had about 120mb of free space. (NOT THE PROBLEM READ ON)
So the point is something in the system is causing massive storage to fill up over time, and its not apps. I have force moved apps and that only helps a little. Is it a certin cache that I can clear? please help!
At the moment I have 60mb of free storage, that is with the app cache cleared through App2SD
Right I have the following : System ROM 219MB , Internal 222MB , SD Card 8.32 GB . When you long press on an app in TB it should give you the option to move to SD card. You shouldn't have to force move an app. When you restored all your apps did you restore apps and data? Or just the app? Also after restoring with TB you need to make sure the app was restored to the correct place. There's an option I usually check in the preferances before I restore all my apps. It restores to the previous location you had the app. Hope that helps.
I restored the apps and data... This isn't a problem with tb, its a problem with some storage/cache something building up in the system
No I'm not using Tapatalk... I'm using the XDA Premium app, cause I got balls.
My email took up a lot of storage on my old hero because everytime I deleted something it still stayed on a new folder called imap/trash... it was taking up about 50mb so you might want to look into that
Sent from my PG06100 using XDA Premium App
In your sd card or internal? There was a folder on my sd called .trashes and it had everything I had deleted on my sd. Where exactly is it located? Ill look in root explorer.
No I'm not using Tapatalk... I'm using the XDA Premium app, cause I got balls.
Don't know if your restoring SMS with something. But if your are sometimes that takes up hella space. Did a phone that had over 25MB of SMS messages restore back onto it on internal mem.
i will see, i also use a tool called disk usage. you have probubly heard of it but it maps out everything and the amount of space it takes up. you can narrow the results to a certin cache or whatever. ive seen that apps like pandora are taking up space in the dalvik cache. Its only like a mb or 2 but still. do you know anything about apps storing things in the dalvik?
what is the dalvik even for anyway?
I've been trying to go back to stock today, so I've wiped a few times, but I've got 430MB total space internal, with 366MB free
and.....
i dont understand what this has to do with this thread
im.nick.hello said:
i will see, i also use a tool called disk usage. you have probubly heard of it but it maps out everything and the amount of space it takes up. you can narrow the results to a certin cache or whatever. ive seen that apps like pandora are taking up space in the dalvik cache. Its only like a mb or 2 but still. do you know anything about apps storing things in the dalvik?
what is the dalvik even for anyway?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I beleive dalvik cache gets recreated everytime you reboot. But, about Pandora is it on the SD Card? Or internal mem? I listen to a TON of music. When I had Pandora on internal it was up to 12MB .So I moved it to the SD card, only 536KB on internal now.
My app is on the SD but it is storing over 1mb on internal
If you have DiskUsage go to the [root required] section and press 'App Storage'
if you can find pandora you will see that most of it is stored in the dalvik cache
Sorry I don't use DiskUsage app. Your right about how much is on internal. Mine reads 1.28MB.
any idea what it is storing there?
Drawing a blank on this, I'll keep looking. See if I can come up with something. But I'd probably head on over to theMikMik and see if somebody there can help.
My biggest space hog when I had problems was email... Try clearing data for email or gmail to see what happens (maybe back up first)
Sent from my PG06100 using XDA App
Mail or gmail app..
I have both, a aim on the mail app and my gmail on the gmail app
No I'm not using Tapatalk... I'm using the XDA Premium app, cause I got balls.
i cleared my cache partition, not sure what was stored there but it doesnt matter cleared up 20mb... is there any other ways i can get more space??? why are apps storing data in the dalvik??
Any other suggestions here? My wife's Shift is having this problem. Constant notification about low storage space. Can't even download any new apps. I have not rooted her phone yet, and not sure if I will; I don't want to have her have to go without for any length of time, and I don't think she wants things changed around so much as she just wants the thing to work, not to have to tinker or troubleshoot.
Captain Spectacular said:
Any other suggestions here? My wife's Shift is having this problem. Constant notification about low storage space. Can't even download any new apps. I have not rooted her phone yet, and not sure if I will; I don't want to have her have to go without for any length of time, and I don't think she wants things changed around so much as she just wants the thing to work, not to have to tinker or troubleshoot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you download a lot of apps? Try moving the apps to the SD Card. The path is Menu-Settings-Applications-Manage applications-Downloaded. Then just click on the applications one at a time. If the button says Move to SD card, and isn't greyed out press it. That should free up some space. If that doesn't work since your not rooted, I would just try a factory reset.
clear the folder /data/tombstones. App crashes and such create rather large files that can eat up quite a bit of space. Also check the cache folder at the root, failed market installs will have file fragments in there as well.
FIRST: A WARNING
These apps require the phone to be rooted to be able to reach their full potential. And as they give you complete control over what to do, it's easy to get your ChaCha f****d up. So a backup with CWM Recovery is highly recommended.
We all know that the internal memory of the Chacha is low, and we are always struggling to have it controlled. Custom roms can make that memory to be really low when just installed, but continued use and trying apps make the memory to be filled with many files that are still there, even when you delete the app and the data associated to that app.
Many people likes to once a month or two, delete data and cache and start again, but for many of us, that's not an option because of the level of customization we have and must be repeated every time that operation it's done.
Enter these three apps, that well used can make you lower the used memory. They allows you to do a mix of regular manteinance and 'once in a while' operations.
AppCache Cleaner Makes easy to clear every day the cache files used by many apps like Market, Maps, Shazam!, and many others. Those cache files are secure and safe to be deleted. The app is easy to be set up and more easy to use. Also, an automatic clean every N time can be set.
SD Maid - System cleaning tool Makes the work of the previous app but with added functionalities, aimed to a less regular manteinance and deep clean. It can find corpses: data files of uninstalled apps that are there wasting space and many other things like log files, duplicated files... that are there making your ChaCha life harder. Some attention is required here because some operations, it not rightly done, can make you have a bad time because of deleting files you wanted not to delete, or that are essential files for your apps or system to run.
SystemCleanup This app is the most powerful of all and also the most dangerous. It has many of the features of the paid version of Titanium Backup, but for free. You can move apps from /system to /data, from /data to /system, odex and deodex them, move from/to sdcard, edit the autorun events they receive, freeze them, make backups... You can get rid of many of the bloatware the ChaCha comes with, and also decide what to do with those apps. The app itself give you directions on some apps that are safe to remove of required not to remove, but you are free to do what you want to with it, so attention must be put on what to do when using it.
I my self was able to remove about 60MB of useless stuff and the free memory jumped to a whopping 92MB of free memory after using them.
Take a look and have luck.
Titanium Backup ★ root - it allows You to "integrate app update to ROM" and save space in user storage.
Also it allows you to remove unused app from ROM and move "integrate" some aplications to ROM.
Most important would be app for recording Calls (both side), do Enyone know that software?
Yesterday I finally got around to shifting my entire music collection to my external SD card, and then I uploaded all my music to Google Drive as well for safe keeping. Woke up the next day missing over 1.5GB of internal storage space. I checked Android assistant and my thumbnail cache was 1.88GB. It's usually pretty high anyway since I have dozens of podcasts, videos, and even some full movies on my external SD card, but now it's ballooned out of control. How can I stop Android from forcing these thumbnails that I don't want associated with my files?
Galaxy S4 stock 4.2.2 and rooted if that makes any difference.
I don't think there's a certain way to prevent this unless someone has a tool for. You'll just have to clear / delete the files as you go along.
Scripts said:
I don't think there's a certain way to prevent this unless someone has a tool for. You'll just have to clear / delete the files as you go along.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The problem is that even after I delete the bloated thumbnail cache, at least according to my settings menu, the internal storage remains the same. So it seems that the space is reserved for the inevitable refreshing of the thumbnail cache that comes every time I reboot or my music gallery is opened. It just annoys me that so much valuable internal space is taken up by something so pointless. If I could find a way to have thumbnails save automatically to my external SD card, I would be happy enough with that.
Hello, I'm not sure how to stop thumbnail caching but try and clear cache its self
Sent from my GT-S5830 using Tapatalk 2
Unfortunately clearing the thumbnail cache does nothing. The internal storage remains the same and the thumbnails are back on reboot all the same.
In this thread I want to share my thoughts and experiences on how to optimize storage and memory for a phone with low internal memory and with access to an SD card, for example like the LG G4S (model H735) with only 8GB internal memory and 1.5GB RAM.
I'm happy to hear more suggestions to optimize!
First of all, you need to root your phone. Find out how to do this for your individual model.
Once you're rooted, you can optimize your storage and memory:
Get a good SD card with fast read and write speeds! This is crucial as you're going to be running lots of apps from it. Get a 32GB (or if your phone supports more, then more!).
You should partition your SD card so that you can make a second partition with the ext4 file system used by Android. Only then will you be able to move almost all your apps to SD! See notes below on how to partition your SD card.
You can now use the excellent Link2SD app to do all of the cleaning tasks:
Moving & linking apps & data to SD
Uninstall system apps
By default, you will only be able to move the "user" apps (the ones which were not installed as part of the system, e.g. the ones you installed yourself). But we can get around this with many apps! This is described below (in 4.).
You may have noticed that when you switch between apps, e.g. between your game and your messaging app, every time you switch, the app reloads (e.g. the game takes ages to start up again). This is because your RAM (main memory) usage is not optimized. You can also do something which is likely fix this, which I will describe below (in 5.).
1. A word about data usage of an app
You may have wondered why your memory usage is still so high when you moved your app to an SD card with the classic Android "Move to SD" functionality (which you can access via the Android app settings).
Well, the classic Android "Move to SD" only moves the app. But often the bulk of the data is actually not in the app itself, but in the data and OBB files of the app! In games, this can be up to several gigabytes. And this stuff remains on your internal storage! So we will need to move this as well, and then "link" to the moved data, so the Android OS "believes" that the data is still on internal storage. Imagine this similar to doing a (soft)link to a file on your computer.
Also, doing it this way ("linking") is much better than the classic Android move-apps. For example, you can avoid problems with widgets which may not run any more once they have been moved to SD with Android move-apps.
There are a few apps which can help you move&link your apps and data. I have tried a few, and in my opinion Link2SD is the best, as it
already detects if your app uses OBB and data files
you can easily display the apps which use most storage (also in terms of data files!)
and you can also uninstall system apps more reliably than with other root apps!
You will need to get the pro version in order to do everything with it, but this is $2 well worth spending, you won't need any other apps for managing the moving. It's much easier than e.g. FolderMount to easily move all the relevant data of an app to SD.
2. The partitions on your phone
Most likely, your phone will be using different partitions on the internal storage for different purposes. For example, there may be a partition which is exclusively to be used for the "system" (the Android OS and system applications).
You can use an app like Disk Info to show the partitions on your internal storage (and SD card) and how much space is still free on them.
This may vary between phones, but in most cases you should find a "data" partition or similar, which is used for
Applications installed by you
Updates of system apps (!!!)
Data, Cache, OBB files etc. used by your apps
The size of this data partition is pretty much what you can get out of your internal storage: if you move everything out of there, this is the maximum free space you can get (again, it may vary from phone to phone). You cannot easily get access to the system and cache partition to use as storage space, and you shouldn't try to mess with that anyway.
So what you can try to do, is shove as much as possible out of the data partition onto your SD card. The free space on data can then be used as a "buffer" when you download and install applications, before you move&link them onto the SD card.
Note also that your data partition is used for updates which may have been automatically downloaded. This may take up a significant chunk of your data partition! So you may want to either:
Move the whole system app to SD card (see below described for Link2SD).
Or, "merge" the updates into the main app, so that it then resides on the system partition again.
To merge the update with the main app, long-tap (tap and hold) on the app in Link2SD and select Integrate app into system. However keep an eye on the free disk space on the system partition, you don't want it to get too close to using full capacity! So only merge updates when you're sure there is enough free space on /system.
3. Partition your SD card
It is important that you create a second partition on your SD card, formatted with the ext4 file system used by Android. Only then will you be able to move all apps completely onto SD.
On Windows, you can use Mini Tool Partition Wizard to partition your SD card and format the second partition as ext4. I won't go into detailed instructions here, there's other documentation for this on-line.
Only a few notes:
It is important that you format the ext4 partition as "primary" also!!!
You can also "resize" the first partition (the FAT32 which may already be on it), without losing your data. However if something goes wrong, you may lose the data anyway, so it's advisable to backup your data on the SD card before.
You may want to keep a FAT32 partition (also formatted as primary), because on windows systems you cannot easily read ext4, so you may want to use the FAT partition to store your pictures etc., which you can then also read from a Windows computer.
4. Use Link2SD to move your apps
Open Link2SD and you will see a list of your apps. On the top bar you can select to display only apps of certain types, e.g. "user" and "system" apps. And you can also sort them according to different criteria, e.g. "Name" or "Size". I often use "Size (total)" in the bottom of the sorting criteria list. This shows the apps which use the most data overall first.
First, we will move the "user" apps to SD.
Display all the "user" apps and click on the first one you want to move & link to SD.
You will see a detailed list of your app and data usage.
You will see buttons to Link to SD card or Remove link. Below this, you see a field titled Android App2SD in which you can Move to SD Card --- this is the classic Android way to move apps: don't use this! Use Link to SD Card instead
After selecting Link to SD card , you can tick the boxes for everything you would like to move (app/cache/internal data...), and then click OK. Link2SD will move all your stuff to the ext4 partition of your SD card and then also link to it.
The apps which also use OBB files and extra data/cache will display extra boxes in Link2SD. Try a game app for example to see this, large games are likely to use this. You can click Link to SD for these extra files also, and it'll be all moved to your SD! Warning: I've had problems particularly with moving OBB files, sometimes also with data files -- the app was not launching properly after I've moved the OBBs. This is not the fault of Link2SD though, I've had the same problems with other apps like for example FolderMount.
If you want to undo the linking, just use Link2SD and select Remove Link. All your data will be moved back to internal storage, and the link will be removed. All back to how it was before. Easy!
Now you may also want to move system apps to SD to create even more space. While system apps natively reside on the /system partition (see 2. above), they also may store data and cache on the /data partition. Or, you may also want to create more space in the /system partition by moving system apps to SD.
The problem is, even though you are rooted, you cannot move the system apps. And for many of the system apps, you shouldn't do this either. However, it is safe to do this for apps which are installed as "system" but not really an integral part of the OS, such as
Chrome
Google maps
Google docs
Google drive
YouTube
and more.
To move them, you can use Link2SD to convert them from "system" app to "user" app.
Open Link2SD and long-tap (tap and hold) on the app to open the options menu. If you have a Convert to user app option, that's that!
If you don't have the conversion option, you can try something else:
Uninstall the app first by long-tapping on the app in Link2SD, and selecting Uninstall. But first make sure you will be able to download this app from Google Play!
You will need to reboot the phone.
Re-install the app from Google Play.
Now, you can use Link2SD to link the app to SD as we did for the user apps before.
Important: Never to this for core system apps, and I would also not touch Google Play or any of its services.
Note: You may also consider to just merge the updates of a system app so that it resides in the /system partition again. See description above (2.) for more details.
5. Optimizing your RAM
What I found particularly annoying on my LG G4S (H735) is that whenever I switched between my game (large files) and another app (e.g. messaging app), the game would load up from scratch again, which would take a few minutes. The reason for this is that the default settings on the phone were set to keep a too big part of the memory "free", so other apps were "killed" as soon as I was using my game. When I then switched back to home screen, all the other apps had to be re-launched, and my game instead "killed" again.
You can decrease the threshold of reserved free memory by editing the build props. There's a risk to get an unstable system if you tweak this too much, but if you try carefully, it may be ok. And you can also reset it to defaults if you're not happy with the results.
You will need a build prop editor, for example the Build Prop Editor app. Open it, and click on the "edit" pencil below to edit the following values:
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree1=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree2=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree3=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree4=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree5=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree6=...
It worked like a treat on my phone (LG G4S with 1.5GB RAM) and was also reported to work nicely with the LG G3, using the following values:
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree1=49152 (unchanged)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree2=61440 (unchanged)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree3=65000 (was set to 73728 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree4=70000 (was set to 204800 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree5=80000 (was set to 262144 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree6=100000 (was set to 327680 originally)
Please share your experiences if you have some tipps to further optimize low-memory phones! Thanks
See also
http://forums.androidcentral.com/lg...ry-using-link2sd-w-pros-cons-vs-data2ext.html
http://www.link2sd.info/faq
jen.magnolis said:
In this thread I want to share my thoughts and experiences on how to optimize storage and memory for a phone with low internal memory and with access to an SD card, for example like the LG G4S (model H735) with only 8GB internal memory and 1.5GB RAM.
I'm happy to hear more suggestions to optimize!
First of all, you need to root your phone. Find out how to do this for your individual model.
Once you're rooted, you can optimize your storage and memory:
Get a good SD card with fast read and write speeds! This is crucial as you're going to be running lots of apps from it. Get a 32GB (or if your phone supports more, then more!).
You should partition your SD card so that you can make a second partition with the ext4 file system used by Android. Only then will you be able to move almost all your apps to SD! See notes below on how to partition your SD card.
You can now use the excellent Link2SD app to do all of the cleaning tasks:
Moving & linking apps & data to SD
Uninstall system apps
By default, you will only be able to move the "user" apps (the ones which were not installed as part of the system, e.g. the ones you installed yourself). But we can get around this with many apps! This is described below (in 4.).
You may have noticed that when you switch between apps, e.g. between your game and your messaging app, every time you switch, the app reloads (e.g. the game takes ages to start up again). This is because your RAM (main memory) usage is not optimized. You can also do something which is likely fix this, which I will describe below (in 5.).
1. A word about data usage of an app
You may have wondered why your memory usage is still so high when you moved your app to an SD card with the classic Android "Move to SD" functionality (which you can access via the Android app settings).
Well, the classic Android "Move to SD" only moves the app. But often the bulk of the data is actually not in the app itself, but in the data and OBB files of the app! In games, this can be up to several gigabytes. And this stuff remains on your internal storage! So we will need to move this as well, and then "link" to the moved data, so the Android OS "believes" that the data is still on internal storage. Imagine this similar to doing a (soft)link to a file on your computer.
Also, doing it this way ("linking") is much better than the classic Android move-apps. For example, you can avoid problems with widgets which may not run any more once they have been moved to SD with Android move-apps.
There are a few apps which can help you move&link your apps and data. I have tried a few, and in my opinion Link2SD is the best, as it
already detects if your app uses OBB and data files
you can easily display the apps which use most storage (also in terms of data files!)
and you can also uninstall system apps more reliably than with other root apps!
You will need to get the pro version in order to do everything with it, but this is $2 well worth spending, you won't need any other apps for managing the moving. It's much easier than e.g. FolderMount to easily move all the relevant data of an app to SD.
2. The partitions on your phone
Most likely, your phone will be using different partitions on the internal storage for different purposes. For example, there may be a partition which is exclusively to be used for the "system" (the Android OS and system applications).
You can use an app like Disk Info to show the partitions on your internal storage (and SD card) and how much space is still free on them.
This may vary between phones, but in most cases you should find a "data" partition or similar, which is used for
Applications installed by you
Updates of system apps (!!!)
Data, Cache, OBB files etc. used by your apps
The size of this data partition is pretty much what you can get out of your internal storage: if you move everything out of there, this is the maximum free space you can get (again, it may vary from phone to phone). You cannot easily get access to the system and cache partition to use as storage space, and you shouldn't try to mess with that anyway.
So what you can try to do, is shove as much as possible out of the data partition onto your SD card. The free space on data can then be used as a "buffer" when you download and install applications, before you move&link them onto the SD card.
Note also that your data partition is used for updates which may have been automatically downloaded. This may take up a significant chunk of your data partition! So you may want to either:
Move the whole system app to SD card (see below described for Link2SD).
Or, "merge" the updates into the main app, so that it then resides on the system partition again.
To merge the update with the main app, long-tap (tap and hold) on the app in Link2SD and select Integrate app into system. However keep an eye on the free disk space on the system partition, you don't want it to get too close to using full capacity! So only merge updates when you're sure there is enough free space on /system.
3. Partition your SD card
It is important that you create a second partition on your SD card, formatted with the ext4 file system used by Android. Only then will you be able to move all apps completely onto SD.
On Windows, you can use Mini Tool Partition Wizard to partition your SD card and format the second partition as ext4. I won't go into detailed instructions here, there's other documentation for this on-line.
Only a few notes:
It is important that you format the ext4 partition as "primary" also!!!
You can also "resize" the first partition (the FAT32 which may already be on it), without losing your data. However if something goes wrong, you may lose the data anyway, so it's advisable to backup your data on the SD card before.
You may want to keep a FAT32 partition (also formatted as primary), because on windows systems you cannot easily read ext4, so you may want to use the FAT partition to store your pictures etc., which you can then also read from a Windows computer.
4. Use Link2SD to move your apps
Open Link2SD and you will see a list of your apps. On the top bar you can select to display only apps of certain types, e.g. "user" and "system" apps. And you can also sort them according to different criteria, e.g. "Name" or "Size". I often use "Size (total)" in the bottom of the sorting criteria list. This shows the apps which use the most data overall first.
First, we will move the "user" apps to SD.
Display all the "user" apps and click on the first one you want to move & link to SD.
You will see a detailed list of your app and data usage.
You will see buttons to Link to SD card or Remove link. Below this, you see a field titled Android App2SD in which you can Move to SD Card --- this is the classic Android way to move apps: don't use this! Use Link to SD Card instead
After selecting Link to SD card , you can tick the boxes for everything you would like to move (app/cache/internal data...), and then click OK. Link2SD will move all your stuff to the ext4 partition of your SD card and then also link to it.
The apps which also use OBB files and extra data/cache will display extra boxes in Link2SD. Try a game app for example to see this, large games are likely to use this. You can click Link to SD for these extra files also, and it'll be all moved to your SD! Warning: I've had problems particularly with moving OBB files, sometimes also with data files -- the app was not launching properly after I've moved the OBBs. This is not the fault of Link2SD though, I've had the same problems with other apps like for example FolderMount.
If you want to undo the linking, just use Link2SD and select Remove Link. All your data will be moved back to internal storage, and the link will be removed. All back to how it was before. Easy!
Now you may also want to move system apps to SD to create even more space. While system apps natively reside on the /system partition (see 2. above), they also may store data and cache on the /data partition. Or, you may also want to create more space in the /system partition by moving system apps to SD.
The problem is, even though you are rooted, you cannot move the system apps. And for many of the system apps, you shouldn't do this either. However, it is safe to do this for apps which are installed as "system" but not really an integral part of the OS, such as
Chrome
Google maps
Google docs
Google drive
YouTube
and more.
To move them, you can use Link2SD to convert them from "system" app to "user" app.
Open Link2SD and long-tap (tap and hold) on the app to open the options menu. If you have a Convert to user app option, that's that!
If you don't have the conversion option, you can try something else:
Uninstall the app first by long-tapping on the app in Link2SD, and selecting Uninstall. But first make sure you will be able to download this app from Google Play!
You will need to reboot the phone.
Re-install the app from Google Play.
Now, you can use Link2SD to link the app to SD as we did for the user apps before.
Important: Never to this for core system apps, and I would also not touch Google Play or any of its services.
Note: You may also consider to just merge the updates of a system app so that it resides in the /system partition again. See description above (2.) for more details.
5. Optimizing your RAM
What I found particularly annoying on my LG G4S (H735) is that whenever I switched between my game (large files) and another app (e.g. messaging app), the game would load up from scratch again, which would take a few minutes. The reason for this is that the default settings on the phone were set to keep a too big part of the memory "free", so other apps were "killed" as soon as I was using my game. When I then switched back to home screen, all the other apps had to be re-launched, and my game instead "killed" again.
You can decrease the threshold of reserved free memory by editing the build props. There's a risk to get an unstable system if you tweak this too much, but if you try carefully, it may be ok. And you can also reset it to defaults if you're not happy with the results.
You will need a build prop editor, for example the Build Prop Editor app. Open it, and click on the "edit" pencil below to edit the following values:
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree1=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree2=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree3=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree4=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree5=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree6=...
It worked like a treat on my phone (LG G4S with 1.5GB RAM) and was also reported to work nicely with the LG G3, using the following values:
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree1=49152 (unchanged)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree2=61440 (unchanged)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree3=65000 (was set to 73728 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree4=70000 (was set to 204800 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree5=80000 (was set to 262144 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree6=100000 (was set to 327680 originally)
Please share your experiences if you have some tipps to further optimize low-memory phones! Thanks
See also
http://forums.androidcentral.com/lg...ry-using-link2sd-w-pros-cons-vs-data2ext.html
http://www.link2sd.info/faq
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So did the linking worked! Because I tried foldermount and link2SD but none of them worked. Which I create a link it simply tries to redownload all the data. Please help!
Hi, can you please be a bit more precise about what you were trying to do? Did you do step 3, then followed by 4, which didn't work?
Uninstall foldermount or make sure it is not linking anything. I had problems with foldermount, it may mess things up in your case.
It is also important you created the right file system in your SD card partition (step 3).
A bit complicated for me but gonna try to do it, thanks man
Sent from my Lenovo A5000 using XDA-Developers mobile app
Hi man
I have a Lenovo p70
And I have 32 gb Kingston class 4
I re-partion my memory with apps2sd all in one
And I link the most apps to SD card but I have a problems
When restart my phone most of the apps disappear and I need to restart my phone with soft restart
What the problem and how I can solve it ??
---------- Post added at 01:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:18 PM ----------
And I have a question for you
Step 5 optimizing ram I don't optimizing it
If it nessesary to work plz tell me
I'm so sorry for bad language
Hi, i am tired and stressed from researching, i cannot find a solution to this problem and i have come here for professional help.
The problem, i was going to install a game(32mb) through google play, and when the download finishes i get the insufficient storage message which is weird considering i always watch and keep track of my storage space, so i clear some cache and decide to download and once again i get the message, this time i decide to delete useless stuff via CCleaner lite and delete useless apps, i download again, and no space message again, i checked my total available space and it says 1.2gb
id place some screenshots but i have another problem with phone that makes me unable to browse my phone via usb on pc's or laptops
im going to check this thread every day, i really need the help, thanks in advance.
A few things to keep in mind:
1. I wont keep uninstalling apps, it works but i cant uninstall important ones
2. I already deleted all of the cache. literally every solution i researched told me obvious stuff i have already done
3. I wont uninstall photos or files
4. Remember i have ''1.2gb of available space'' so no need to do any of the above
5. I acknowledge that sometimes phones might prevent you from downloading apps just to save some space for cache and app data
6. I have a sd card(2gb) but my phone doesnt have the option to move apps to external space and i cant force it even through root
7. I have android 4.0.4
8. My phone is rooted, but its kinda broken(''kingo'' root, not to be confused by ''king'' root), every time the phone restarts or turns off something makes the main root app(the ones that grants root permission to other apps) to get corrupted and not start up(crashes on start) making me having to reinstall it using a backup
1337Potato said:
Hi, i am tired and stressed from researching, i cannot find a solution to this problem and i have come here for professional help.
The problem, i was going to install a game(32mb) through google play, and when the download finishes i get the insufficient storage message which is weird considering i always watch and keep track of my storage space, so i clear some cache and decide to download and once again i get the message, this time i decide to delete useless stuff via CCleaner lite and delete useless apps, i download again, and no space message again, i checked my total available space and it says 1.2gb
id place some screenshots but i have another problem with phone that makes me unable to browse my phone via usb on pc's or laptops
im going to check this thread every day, i really need the help, thanks in advance.
A few things to keep in mind:
1. I wont keep uninstalling apps, it works but i cant uninstall important ones
2. I already deleted all of the cache. literally every solution i researched told me obvious stuff i have already done
3. I wont uninstall photos or files
4. Remember i have ''1.2gb of available space'' so no need to do any of the above
5. I acknowledge that sometimes phones might prevent you from downloading apps just to save some space for cache and app data
6. I have a sd card(2gb) but my phone doesnt have the option to move apps to external space and i cant force it even through root
7. I have android 4.0.4
8. My phone is rooted, but its kinda broken(''kingo'' root, not to be confused by ''king'' root), every time the phone restarts or turns off something makes the main root app(the ones that grants root permission to other apps) to get corrupted and not start up(crashes on start) making me having to reinstall it using a backup
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have plenty of storage but that doesn't mean you have room for apps because apps are installed in /data partition, there is a difference. You have storage space but only a portion of it is allocated as space for apps, the rest is storage. You can repartition the device to give your /data partition more available space. Do not repartition your device unless you understand exactly what you are doing.
I DO NOT PROVIDE HELP IN PM, KEEP IT IN THE THREADS WHERE EVERYONE CAN SHARE
Droidriven said:
You have plenty of storage but that doesn't mean you have room for apps because apps are installed in /data partition, there is a difference. You have storage space but only a portion of it is allocated as space for apps, the rest is storage. You can repartition the device to give your /data partition more available space. Do not repartition your device unless you understand exactly what you are doing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know, but before i could keep installing apps until i had 200mb of space left for app storage, why would it be different now, i have a total of 2gb internal storage small i know, but still no reason to stop being able of installing apps at 1gb left, makes no sense, and i'll research about repartition carefully if there isnt another good answer to my problem
1337Potato said:
I know, but before i could keep installing apps until i had 200mb of space left for app storage, why would it be different now, i have a total of 2gb internal storage small i know, but still no reason to stop being able of installing apps at 1gb left, makes no sense, and i'll research about repartition carefully if there isnt another good answer to my problem
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You might be full of app data from apps you've uninstalled, uninstalled apps can leave data behind, look in your Android/data folder. You might also be storing logs somewhere taking up space.
Have you used any apps to analyze your internal storage? It should tell you everything you have stored there, files sizes and locations.
I DO NOT PROVIDE HELP IN PM, KEEP IT IN THE THREADS WHERE EVERYONE CAN SHARE
Droidriven said:
You might be full of app data from apps you've uninstalled, uninstalled apps can leave data behind, look in your Android/data folder. You might also be storing logs somewhere taking up space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It turns out there was an odex files messing with the instalation, when deleted them i could start installing again, sorry for the trouble and thanks for the help!