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Phone Storage

Why is it when i install any program on memory card it goes to the main storage. Anyone has notice that on the HD2, is there a solution for this. Need your help please

buddaking said:
Why is it when i install any program on memory card it goes to the main storage. Anyone has notice that on the HD2, is there a solution for this. Need your help please
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i guess that when you install something on storage card some files like shortcut and registry files are sent in phone storage

mishufac said:
i guess that when you install something on storage card some files like shortcut and registry files are sent in phone storage
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ok....thanks for that info. so unfortunate there is no solution for this.

Errm what.
Hey Budda could you explain what you mean a little more here mate? i.e. how do you know that the application is being installed to the main memory rather than your SD card. Are you checking in 'my device\program files' in explorer (first to see that its in main memory) and then 'my device\storage card\program files' to see if it's on the SD?
Just so that you are aware in order to be able to see shortcuts in either the start menu or sense that shortcut MUST be in main memory in the 'my device\windows\start menu\programs' folder or you wont be able to launch the app easily. - These files are tiny, between 24 - 54 bytes, so very little impact on main memory. To put it in perspective you would need ~18000 of them to take up just 1MB!
The registry also lives in main memory although in all reality doesn't take up much space adding the odd key here and there. (again the odd few bytes)
Some applications NEED to install some files to 'my device\windows' in order to function correctly, again this is not something which can be stopped.
BTW - Any app I install to my storage card does in fact go there (with the exception of parts of the programs I have mentioned above) So in answer to your original question, no I don't see the problem at all.

Prime_Directive said:
Hey Budda could you explain what you mean a little more here mate? i.e. how do you know that the application is being installed to the main memory rather than your SD card. Are you checking in 'my device\program files' in explorer (first to see that its in main memory) and then 'my device\storage card\program files' to see if it's on the SD?
Just so that you are aware in order to be able to see shortcuts in either the start menu or sense that shortcut MUST be in main memory in the 'my device\windows\start menu\programs' folder or you wont be able to launch the app easily. - These files are tiny, between 24 - 54 bytes, so very little impact on main memory. To put it in perspective you would need ~18000 of them to take up just 1MB!
The registry also lives in main memory although in all reality doesn't take up much space adding the odd key here and there. (again the odd few bytes)
Some applications NEED to install some files to 'my device\windows' in order to function correctly, again this is not something which can be stopped.
BTW - Any app I install to my storage card does in fact go there (with the exception of parts of the programs I have mentioned above) So in answer to your original question, no I don't see the problem at all.
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Well that was a bit brutal...
Actually I kind of know what he's saying.. I've found with a few (eg. Experiment 13) they over ride and install to the handset memory anyway. I thought it might be down to it needing the extra speed, might be wrong. I do agree in a whole tho, most apps do install bits 'n' bobs on the handset but hardly worth worrying about (from a storage point of view anyway)

Not enough memory. Delete some items.

What the heck?
Where'd my space go????
My external SD card is easy enough...
But what the heck to do with the internal memory? I can't just format it and start over. How do I know what's safe to clean up and not?
I use ROM Manager and Titanium Backup, I figure they're sucking space down, too, but don't know exactly where they store their data and what to delete.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=736652
Hopefully this can help.

tysj said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=736652
Hopefully this can help.
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Possibly. My thumbnail cache is eating up 4GB of space? That's freaking ridiculous...
1) How do I clear it? The thread doesn't say.
2) How do I prevent it from getting so big again?

I suppose you can use the My Files app to find the directory and delete them that way. Which directory? I don't even know . I think there are apps that can show how much space is being taken up by a folder and you can investigate suspect folders further.

tysj said:
I suppose you can use the My Files app to find the directory and delete them that way. Which directory? I don't even know . I think there are apps that can show how much space is being taken up by a folder and you can investigate suspect folders further.
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I'll just delete the whole cache directory and see what happens.
Question #2 seems to be a big one. I mean 4GB in cache... That's stupid.

FIXED
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=840016

Should Android contain its own "Program Files"?

I am amazed at Android's rather foolish decisions. From notifications always interrupting music playback, to the odd bugs I encounter "see my messaging topic on Samsung Captivate general", to this one. Apps do not have a default location setting. They all can locate themselves wherever they want. So, your Android SD (oh yeah, another foolish choice, calling the phone's memory SD. Then, your SD Card gets to be "External SD". Totally unnecessary of Google. I mean, the app "App2SD" doesn't make any Android sense. It should say "App2ExternalSD". Anyway, where was I?)
So, your Android SD is filled with random, unimportant for root level folders. Your DCIM is located right next to a bunch of random folders! Why is there not a "Program Files" option for Android, where Google FORCES these folders into a subfolder group, so that you can not only locate them easier, but they are not cluttering up your SD.
So, do you guys think is this a good idea? And if so, where can I go to have this heard by Android devs?

thehyecircus said:
Apps do not have a default location setting.
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They have: /data/data/<package_name>/. This is main directory for app data or "program files" as you call it.
thehyecircus said:
Why is there not a "Program Files" option for Android, where Google FORCES these folders into a subfolder group
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Because this isn't an iPhone. If you want to force developers to use only right way of storing files on SD, then go for devices from Apple.
SD card is a general, unmanaged medium for storing files, so it shouldn't force anything. Of course it's better to have clean directory structure and this is why Google and some other developers use /sdcard/Android/<package_name>/ dir for their files.
If some app doesn't use above scheme, then you could write a comment or rate it low - this is the way of openness.
thehyecircus said:
oh yeah, another foolish choice, calling the phone's memory SD. Then, your SD Card gets to be "External SD". Totally unnecessary of Google. I mean, the app "App2SD" doesn't make any Android sense. It should say "App2ExternalSD"
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Err... who does call internal memory SD? For me SD was always just SD, and internal memory is internal memory, flash memory, system and data partitions, etc. As you have noticed there is apps2SD, not apps2ExternalSD, because everybody calls SD just SD. So what's your problem?

thehyecircus said:
I am amazed at Android's rather foolish decisions. From notifications always interrupting music playback, to the odd bugs I encounter "see my messaging topic on Samsung Captivate general", to this one. Apps do not have a default location setting. They all can locate themselves wherever they want. So, your Android SD (oh yeah, another foolish choice, calling the phone's memory SD. Then, your SD Card gets to be "External SD". Totally unnecessary of Google. I mean, the app "App2SD" doesn't make any Android sense. It should say "App2ExternalSD". Anyway, where was I?)
So, your Android SD is filled with random, unimportant for root level folders. Your DCIM is located right next to a bunch of random folders! Why is there not a "Program Files" option for Android, where Google FORCES these folders into a subfolder group, so that you can not only locate them easier, but they are not cluttering up your SD.
So, do you guys think is this a good idea? And if so, where can I go to have this heard by Android devs?
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You have no idea what you are talking about, do you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard
This is for standard linux but it the logic behind it applies to Android as well.

You know, TS has a point. Most applications write their data into /sdcard/<app>, whereas it would've been cleaner to do that in /sdcard/data/<app> (or, even better and in line with unix's defacto standard, in /mnt/sdcard/<app>). The SDCard's root is limited in the number of directory entries it can contain (due to the mandatory use of the FAT filesystem). Even though this currently may be a theoretical problem, it's messy and unorganized.
Some software really makes a mess out of it; Sygic for example creates 4 directories in /sdcard with the names "2577", "Drive", "Maps" and "Res". Not to mention the file(s) it creates in the root as part of the installation process. Now, that is plain silly.
Then there is the case-sensitivity in *IX that some programmer's don't seem to understand. And thus, there are directories /sdcard/Download, /sdcard/download and /sdcard/Downloads. Two of them are created by the firmware on the phone (you guessed it: "download" and "Downloads"). It just is a mess on our sdcards!
Using a wintendo-like naming convention ("Program Files" or "Program Data" or something similar) I would not advice. But /mnt/sdcard/data would've been a good start me thinks.
The other point TS is referring to... I think it's Samsung that introduced the idea of an "internal SD Card"? At least, that's what they call it - I don't know if it really just is a cheap design solution to put an SD Card in there for storage that can't be changed.

^I like that guy.

Is this the end of the discussion?

thehyecircus said:
Is this the end of the discussion?
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I think there is nothing to add:
There is your "program files" dir in the Android OS (/data/data).
Some apps want to store their files in public space in addition to "program files".
It would be nice if most of them would place their files in one root dir.
Some of them don't do that and you can't do anything with it.
That's it

I'd like to think Google could force them to locate their data somewhere else. And to add a .nomedia or whatever stops Android from picking up the app's media files. Really, a lot of things about Android feel like the whole thing is an afterthought.

[Q] Changing default save folder to micro sd

Howdy all!
I have a newby question. How can I change the default location to were the cameras save the pictures? I would like to have them save to a folder on micro sd card without have to manually move them from device storage to the removable storage. On my Evo 3d it defaulted to the removable storage but I guess I am a little dense, as I can not figure out how to do it on the transformer.
Thanks for looking!
Bryan

You could probably just set up a symlink...

danger-rat said:
You could probably just set up a symlink...
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I do this a lot (symbolic links) on Linux but I could never get it working on Android. Does anybody know a way to create a symbolic link in Android? Specifically, it would be really helpful to create a symbolic link to my external SD card from the main directory (sorry, forgot what it was called dont have tablet with me)

Symlinks are essentially the same on Android as they are on Linux, however there are a lot of virtual folders (like your internal SD memory, which is really /data/media). The key is to find the true source (wow, I sound like some Point Break dude).
Anyway, you would need to be rooted, but this thread would help:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1442729

[Q] Shrinking memory?

Hello all, last night when I went to sleep I had about 1.5 GB free on my internal storage.
This morning I woke up and it was full (1MB free).
Wifi was off overnight.
What happened? Any ideas?
This is a wifi only shield with the most uptodate lollipop version.
Thank you all

You can analyze your SD card with ES File Explorer or check which apps are hogging the most internal storage from your settings. Both of those ideas come to mind right about now.
Sent from my Galaxy S5

primetechv2 said:
You can analyze your SD card with ES File Explorer or check which apps are hogging the most internal storage from your settings. Both of those ideas come to mind right about now.
Sent from my Galaxy S5
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Thank you. I tried ES File Explorer - and according to it - I have in fact only a tiny amount of free space - but all folders are small. So if I add them up (estimating manually) there is no way that the total of them fills up the whole internal memory card.
Is it possible that there is a large file or folder sitting somewhere, but it is not seen by ES File explorer?
Most of the large apps are moved (with folder mount) to the external SD card.
Now I removed a few apps that were on the internal sd card. I should have about 4GB free now - but have only about 1 GB free. No idea where the space is.
I am totally puzzled...

A question. I am using now the "Disk Usage" app.
It shows that I am using 3.7GB for apps - makes sense.
It also shows that my system data is over 6GB.
When I try to see what is inside system that takes up that space, the app crashes with the following message: java error: no more data
Can please someone tell me how big is your system folder when using the free Disk Usage app?
How can I check what is taking space in the system folder?

Which disk usage app is this? Disk Usage by AndUtil? DiskUsage? Neither of these have anywhere you can see where system space has been used.
ES File Explorer, like the other options, says I have 11.95GB disk space total, between what I've used and what's still left.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

primetechv2 said:
Which disk usage app is this? Disk Usage by AndUtil? Disk Usage? Neither of these have anywhere you can see where system space has been used.
ES File Explorer, like the other options, says I have 11.95GB disk space total, between what I've used and what's still left.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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The app is called DiskUsage - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.diskusage&hl=en

With Folder Mount, even though you've moved files to the external SD, they're still linked to the internal storage and will report as used space unfortunately (even though they're not actually taking up space on the internal).
If you detach the pairs, you should see the free space revealed.
Also, the hidden (cache?) file in the thumbnails folder in the DCIM folder always seems to be excessively large (showing up as 3.5GB on my shield )
Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using XDA Free mobile app

An Droid said:
With Folder Mount, even though you've moved files to the external SD, they're still linked to the internal storage and will report as used space unfortunately (even though they're not actually taking up space on the internal).
If you detach the pairs, you should see the free space revealed.
Also, the hidden (cache?) file in the thumbnails folder in the DCIM folder always seems to be excessively large (showing up as 3.5GB on my shield )
Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using XDA Free mobile app
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Thank you. I switched foldermount off to ensure that the data I get is accurate.
I also deleted the contents of the dcim folder but no real impact.
I will do a factory reset now . that should solve this I hope

Gadgetguy2005 said:
Thank you. I switched foldermount off to ensure that the data I get is accurate.
I also deleted the contents of the dcim folder but no real impact.
I will do a factory reset now . that should solve this I hope
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OK. After factory reset and reinstalling ALL apps I have 6GB free. (where before I had 1.5GB available)
Problem seems to be solved for now - but I still dont have the faintest idea what has happened.

Did you scan your storage with ES file explorer (see in Tools in ES, there is a free storage analyzer)? I was also thinking about DCIM thumbnails, a recursive storage eater on my devices, but it could be another app cache : pocket, Google play books, there are many... but you should see this in settings/applications (filter by app size).

Gadgetguy2005 said:
OK. After factory reset and reinstalling ALL apps I have 6GB free. (where before I had 1.5GB available)
Problem seems to be solved for now - but I still dont have the faintest idea what has happened.
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Disk and Storage Analyzer Pro is the best tool I've found, though I'm sure there are others.

Thank you all for the suggestions.
I have used various tools (from ES File Explorer to various folder size apps) - and I was unable to find the culprit.
Some applications actually suggested I have 5GB free (based on adding up the storage used) - while my Shield told me I had only 1.5GB.
I think the problem was with a file in the system area (which many folder size apps do not diagnose well).
A factory reset solved this - and for now all is good.
If it ever happens again (I hope not!) I will do more digging.

Gadgetguy2005 said:
Thank you all for the suggestions.
I have used various tools (from ES File Explorer to various folder size apps) - and I was unable to find the culprit.
Some applications actually suggested I have 5GB free (based on adding up the storage used) - while my Shield told me I had only 1.5GB.
I think the problem was with a file in the system area (which many folder size apps do not diagnose well).
A factory reset solved this - and for now all is good.
If it ever happens again (I hope not!) I will do more digging.
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Click to collapse
The app I was talking about can read the entire /data partition and sees everything. I'm sure other apps may have this functionality as well though I love this one's UI.