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[Q] storage problem/free space -- what is taking up so much??

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.

[Q] Where Is My Internal Storage?

Hi all,
I am using a stock ROM on my Inspire 4G. For some time now, I have been getting this message: "Low on space: Phone storage space is getting low." I do have a lot of apps installed, but I have moved every movable app larger than 1MB onto my SD card, and I have continued to get the message. Today I reached the point where I cannot even upgrade an app. I am showing 70.34MB of available space.
I have searched Market for something that would tell me what's using all my storage, but everything I found is limited to external/SD card storage. Can anyone tell me what else I can do to most effectively recover some storage? What are the most likely culprits?
Thanks!

search the android market. Diskview.
not much else you can do without root access to that partition

I could be very wrong on this, but from what I understand the internal storage is partitioned in a way that most of it is not usable for general use. I have rooted my phone and switched rooms and I still only have a little over a gig of memory on my phone for apps and such
From the House of the Rising Sun using IceColdSandwich

Barkt said:
I could be very wrong on this, but from what I understand the internal storage is partitioned in a way that most of it is not usable for general use. I have rooted my phone and switched rooms and I still only have a little over a gig of memory on my phone for apps and such
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
4gb internal storage on specs and around 1gb is 'usable'.
However, OP's issue is that he's out of internal storage space. I do know that there have been issues with other devices where moving apps to sdcard still left a copy on the internal storage.
OP: Might consider doing a bit of data cleaning rather than app moving.

Even when you move apps to the SD card, it still leaves a little bit of the app in internal. So if you really have a lot of apps, you're going to have to remove something. Unless there is something else wrong. I have around 150 apps installed, with everything that can be put on SD put there, and I have around 650MB still available.

Thanks, everyone, for your replies. I've been really slow getting back to this because I've had other issues I've had to deal with. I did move absolutely every movable app onto the SD card, but it didn't help.
Wolamok, I had assumed I would have to remove some data, but what? I had about 2300 contacts, many of which were duplicates. While I was cleaning them up in Outlook, I decided to delete them ALL from my phone to see what memory I could free up.. A few contacts were repopulated from social media, but only 60 or 70. However, I 'me still out of of memory and getting notifications, and I still can't so much as upgrade an app.
I feel really stupid, because on my Pocket PCs and Windows Mobile devices, I knew exactly where to look for data and what to remove, but I feel totally lost here.
I don't even know which apps to uninstall, because I don't know which ones have left pieces around in internal memory and how much.
Any more ideas, anyone?
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium

I forgot to mention that while I appreciated the Diskview suggestion, I can't get it to run. I don't know if you my memory is too low to even do that, but it says it's analyzing the SD card and never finishes.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium

MagicSpeller said:
I don't even know which apps to uninstall, because I don't know which ones have left pieces around in internal memory and how much.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whenever you uninstall an app, be sure to clear cache and data for it first. And force stop it if that option isn't grayed out. Then there shouldn't be any remnants of it.
When you go into manage applications, you should be able to get an idea of where the most storage is being used. The amount that is listed for each app is only internal storage if you're on the "downloaded" or "all" tabs. So even if an app is on the SD card, what's listed is how much internal storage it is using.
Bottom line is, if you're hurting for storage, uninstall anything you don't really use. Even all those free Amazon games. You can always reinstall them in the future. Hope that helps to give you an idea of what's hogging storage.

pazzo02 said:
Whenever you uninstall an app, be sure to clear cache and data for it first. And force stop it if that option isn't grayed out. Then there shouldn't be any remnants of it.
When you go into manage applications, you should be able to get an idea of where the most storage is being used. The amount that is listed for each app is only internal storage if you're on the "downloaded" or "all" tabs. So even if an app is on the SD card, what's listed is how much internal storage it is using.
Bottom line is, if you're hurting for storage, uninstall anything you don't really use. Even all those free Amazon games. You can always reinstall them in the future. Hope that helps to give you an idea of what's hogging storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks a lot for the reply. By the time I saw it, I had already gotten so frustrated I had followed you advice in advance. I deleted all the apps I'd installed and was going to try out "some day"--and yes, that included all the free Amazon games I'd never played!
I was surprised to see how much space was being used by apps that supposedly were on the SD card.
I hadn't thought of clearing cache and data, and I guess I'm too late for that now, but I'll definitely keep that in mind for the future.
Thanks again!

Clean up SD Card?

I would like to clean up my sd card and free up as much space as possible.
Right now i find it pretty annoying that while using a file explorer seeing all the useless folders I don't use, that apps make or android makes.
is there going to be an issue if i rename all of the folders with a "." in front of the name so that they're hidden?
I would also like to free up as much space on the sd card as possible.
right now 1.5Gb is being used by a folder called Android/Data.
I would like to free up as much of the 16Gb as possible.

Which version is urs international or att because if u buy att then you will have only 10gb available on sd card
Regarding keeping a dot to hide the folders. Ya you can use that to hide the folders but I am sure it won't help you in reducing the space on sd card .
Wait for someone with more knowledge on changing or deleting names of android and app folders because I am not sure if they cause any problems ( usually app create those folders while installation to store app data )
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

abhipati said:
What is the storage capacity of ur phone I mean 16gb or 32gb
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium
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Click to collapse
16Gb, the att/rogers version only have 16Gb versions I thought?

Ya att version has only 16 gb in which only 10 gb is available
Refer to this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1715582
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

i have 7.8Gb free, then I have some music and pictures.
still trying to figure out if i make all of the folders hidden, while the phone still be able to find them?
and i have a folder called "android" on my sd card thats taking up 1.5Gb.
cant tell if its safe or not to delete/move.

The android folder contains data for apps you installed from the play store.

If you hide folder associated with an app, the app will likely not work properly. For most folders that have been generated by the OS or apps, I'd leave them alone. Messing with them will either break an app, or the OS will just assume the folder is gone, and make a new folder.
Couple exceptions, if there are any files in LOST.DIR, you can delete them. As long as you are confidant that none of your SD card files (photos, etc.) have been corrupted (that you may want to recover), since this is where they end up, if they do. You are probably also safe deleting any folder called "temp" or something similar. But that folder doesn't always show up.

"Low on space" when very few apps are installed

Hey I'm currently using a HTC HD2 with Android 2.2 and having issues with storage.
I remember when I first received this phone, I downloaded multiple apps/games and there was enough space for all of them. However after few months of use I was hit with the "Low On Space" notification. So I deleted apps that I wasn't using and fewed a few on SD card. A few more months now and I realise I have no games on my phone and every app that I need is on SD card, yet I'm still given the "Low On Space." Could anyone explain what is happening?
I've read a few other posts and googled but I'm so confused in what they mean. Some suggest moving caches and others tell me to try another ROM. Absolutely no clue what they mean :S
Thanks.

First of all, wipe all caches. Do this by downloading any cache cleaner application and using its primary function.
Also, I once got an extra 30mb of space by using root explorer, going into /data/ and looking around for useless files and deleting them
Sent from my DROID2 using xda premium

Hey thx for the reply, I downloaded app cache cleaner and cleared about 11mb which is very helpful. Also I use OI file manager and browsed into data, but nothing is there (or perhaps its hidden not sure). Thx for the tip thou

No problem
Another tip is to delete your browser history (if you don't really care about it), for me it takes up a lot of space
Deleting old sms and mms messages, clearing call log help as well.
Sent from my MB508 using xda premium

Link2SD
If you have root, you can moove every app on SD-card. Download Link2SD, create 2nd partition on SD (i have 300MB FAT32) card and enjoy the space. Evenif you change rom, you can link apps what you have on SD

Will App2SD work on an stock Galaxy Note 3

hi,
is it now possible to move apps from the internal storage to the SD-Card. Which of theese Apps will work, with an Note 3 (no root - just stock)?
With the Note 2 it wasn´t possible.

Note3 already have move to sd function on stock firmware right? Go to application manager and check it.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

No from all applications! Right?
Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

This is stock lol
Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

It actually installs half the apps to the external SD by default....
Annoyingly. I've yet to find a way to turn it off. I have 22GB free internally, and 18MB on my 64GB MicroSD. I do not want the apps on my Media card! How the bloody hell do I turn it off?!

ShadowLea said:
It actually installs half the apps to the external SD by default....
Annoyingly. I've yet to find a way to turn it off. I have 22GB free internally, and 18MB on my 64GB MicroSD. I do not want the apps on my Media card! How the bloody hell do I turn it off?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hahaha I just don't understand how you manage to curse in a specific way in every thread but you always make me laugh. Anyway my N900 doesn't do that but just download "AppMgr (either normal or pro) III (App 2 SD)" and manage them to select the ones you don't want in your precious sd (A part of me dies everytime I end with the space of another sd so I understand)
Sent from my SM-N900 using xda app-developers app

*GalaxyDev* said:
Hahaha I just don't understand how you manage to curse in a specific way in every thread but you always make me laugh. Anyway my N900 doesn't do that but just download "AppMgr (either normal or pro) III (App 2 SD)" and manage them to select the ones you don't want in your precious sd (A part of me dies everytime I end with the space of another sd so I understand)
Sent from my SM-N900 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Practice, practice, practice...
Well, The phone does tell me what app is on my SD (under apps/sd it has a green checkmark) and I can move it through there, but thank you for the reminder, I somehow completely forgot you could also use App2SD the other way around... :laugh:
Send From My Samsung Galaxy Note 3 N9005 Using Tapatalk

ShadowLea said:
Practice, practice, practice...
Well, The phone does tell me what app is on my SD (under apps/sd it has a green checkmark) and I can move it through there, but thank you for the reminder, I somehow completely forgot you could also use App2SD the other way around... :laugh:
Send From My Samsung Galaxy Note 3 N9005 Using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
strangely it DOES NOT movie any SD data to extSD although press move to SD option. so my 64 gb external micro sd cannot be used for apps right? only the internal sd (32 gb) can be used to move the app data into not the micro sd??? I m on n9005 btw

onours said:
strangely it DOES NOT movie any SD data to extSD although press move to SD option. so my 64 gb external micro sd cannot be used for apps right? only the internal sd (32 gb) can be used to move the app data into not the micro sd??? I m on n9005 btw
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It(Samsung's) will allow you to move any app that doesn't impact on the system... Games should be fine as well as as any app not related to the system....
For instance, I have my Note 3 rooted by de la Vega method with xposed framework installed. Can't move any of the framework modules onto external sd card but games like Plants vs Zombies 2 are no problem...

onours said:
strangely it DOES NOT movie any SD data to extSD although press move to SD option. so my 64 gb external micro sd cannot be used for apps right? only the internal sd (32 gb) can be used to move the app data into not the micro sd??? I m on n9005 btw
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can't move system-essential files. Wallpapers also tend to make a fuss if you move them. Games and such work fine. No, you can't move Twitter, Youtube and the likes, for some unfathomable reason it sees that as essential. I call it Bloatware, but alas.
Anything else you can move. They end up in the .android_secure folder on your SD. (you can see that one even without root. Just enable hidden files.) I accidentally deleted that folder a while ago. The apps remained installed, but they could no longer be found on the device for launching. (even using S Finder.)
Anyway I was working in the opposite direction. As I said, My ExtSD is full, but my internal memory still has 13GB free. (I've moved things.)
I prefer to keep internal for apps alone. Less clutter means less slowdowns. And that way if my phone dies for whatever reason and I need to factory reset or RMA, I can just pull the MicroSD and all my data will be fine. Which in turn means one less panicked member on XDA begging the others how to recover the data, and a lot less people needing to say 'you should've backed up!'.
I have always used the same principle on my pc and laptop. C:\ for programs alone, the other drives (or if I only have one, partition) for data. it'll always be safe if I need to wipe Windows. Always keep your data separate from the system!
32GB is more than enough for apps. I have 430 apps installed, amongst which several 1GB+ games, and still have 13GB free. The only thing I keep on my MicroSD in terms of apps are navigational data. (So I don't have to redownload all 5.8GB of that when my phone rolls over and dies, or I switch.)

ShadowLea said:
You can't move system-essential files. Wallpapers also tend to make a fuss if you move them. Games and such work fine. No, you can't move Twitter, Youtube and the likes, for some unfathomable reason it sees that as essential. I call it Bloatware, but alas.
Anything else you can move. They end up in the .android_secure folder on your SD. (you can see that one even without root. Just enable hidden files.) I accidentally deleted that folder a while ago. The apps remained installed, but they could no longer be found on the device for launching. (even using S Finder.)
Anyway I was working in the opposite direction. As I said, My ExtSD is full, but my internal memory still has 13GB free. (I've moved things.)
I prefer to keep internal for apps alone. Less clutter means less slowdowns. And that way if my phone dies for whatever reason and I need to factory reset or RMA, I can just pull the MicroSD and all my data will be fine. Which in turn means one less panicked member on XDA begging the others how to recover the data, and a lot less people needing to say 'you should've backed up!'.
I have always used the same principle on my pc and laptop. C:\ for programs alone, the other drives (or if I only have one, partition) for data. it'll always be safe if I need to wipe Windows. Always keep your data separate from the system!
32GB is more than enough for apps. I have 430 apps installed, amongst which several 1GB+ games, and still have 13GB free. The only thing I keep on my MicroSD in terms of apps are navigational data. (So I don't have to redownload all 5.8GB of that when my phone rolls over and dies, or I switch.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
guys C'MON.. offcourse I know that system app and or data cannot be moved to external "micro sd" unless you use a directory binder kinda app.
what I mean is altahough the app manager shows that app data is in SD (green tick) card my external "micro" sd cards .android_secure folder is empty and the only storage occupied is internal sd (32gb) on which the data is stored at android/obb
what the heck is wrong with my note 3

so is it just me?

Use FolderMount
Sent from my SM-N900W8 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

ShadowLea said:
I prefer to keep internal for apps alone. Less clutter means less slowdowns. And that way if my phone dies for whatever reason and I need to factory reset or RMA, I can just pull the MicroSD and all my data will be fine. Which in turn means one less panicked member on XDA begging the others how to recover the data, and a lot less people needing to say 'you should've backed up!'.
I have always used the same principle on my pc and laptop. C:\ for programs alone, the other drives (or if I only have one, partition) for data. it'll always be safe if I need to wipe Windows. Always keep your data separate from the system!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly my philosophy on storage, though it started with a separate drive for /home on Debian rather than with Windows, but has expanded to the point where I even have a specific hard drive for game installs on my WIN7 gaming rig.
Funny that before Google started going on about orphan files and the mess apps make on SD cards there wasn't one. My SD card was set up exactly how I wanted and data was shared nicely between apps.
Now there seems to be no option to stop putting junk files on there, an issue I haven't seen since 2.3, and even when I move them back the phantom folders for the apps that I've taken off the SD keep showing back up where I deleted them.