Database Info

SD card hierarchy?

Is it just me, or does anyone have a messy folder structure?
Ex, my SD card is named HTC 16GB and under it I have about 50 folders.
I've seen on several threads people mentioning system/app, yet I don't have those folders, my system folders are scattered a bit.
Is there any specific hierarchy I should follow, would organizing my folders screw up my phone when it tries to retrieve data?
Here's an image:
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Well it's in alphabetical order...
DO NOT TOUCH THE FOLDERS
Reorganising them could stuff up your SD card I strongly recommend you leave them they are all in their place for a reason.

GladiatoRiley said:
Well it's in alphabetical order...
DO NOT TOUCH THE FOLDERS
Reorganising them could brick the phone I strongly recommend you leave them they are all in their place for a reason.
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What? You aren't going to brick you phone meeting with folders on the sd card. In fact I've deleted, renamed and done just about everything else with folders on the sd card.
Oh, and to the op. To find your system/app folder, you need to use a file explorer on your phone, like es file explorer, and access the folder from your phone, as system folders are in your phones memory an not the sd card.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA

masondoctorjt said:
What? You aren't going to brick you phone meeting with folders on the sd card. In fact I've deleted, renamed and done just about everything else with folders on the sd card.
Oh, and to the op. To find your system/app folder, you need to use a file explorer on your phone, like es file explorer, and access the folder from your phone, as system folders are in your phones memory an not the sd card.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA
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Click to collapse
I've thought about that but after using ES File Explorer, I was unable to locate the system folders.

ungraph said:
I've thought about that but after using ES File Explorer, I was unable to locate the system folders.
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Click to collapse
Use root explorer go to system and there is go, done!

[Q] ghost files??

So as I went to update Facebook this morning, my phone alerted me I had insufficient storage. Apparently 9 gigs of "other" files are taking up a bunch of space yet I cannot find them, even with showing hidden files. I don't wanna just go deleting files that I'm unsure of. Any ideas?
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m4gkman said:
So as I went to update Facebook this morning, my phone alerted me I had insufficient storage. Apparently 9 gigs of "other" files are taking up a bunch of space yet I cannot find them, even with showing hidden files. I don't wanna just go deleting files that I'm unsure of. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What rom are you on? If you've just recently moved to TW 4.3 or AOSP 4.2/4.3/4.4 then all of your TW 4.1.2 data is in /data/media. Pics, music, videos, nandroid backups are the biggest folders usually.

SlimSnoopOS said:
What rom are you on? If you've just recently moved to TW 4.3 or AOSP 4.2/4.3/4.4 then all of your TW 4.1.2 data is in /data/media. Pics, music, videos, nandroid backups are the biggest folders usually.
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Click to collapse
I'm currently using the newest beanstalk 4.4 rom. its not my photos or anything though. I've been using a file manager to look around and its considered "other" i think its stuff somewhere deeper then the emulated sd card :/

m4gkman said:
I'm currently using the newest beanstalk 4.4 rom. its not my photos or anything though. I've been using a file manager to look around and its considered "other" i think its stuff somewhere deeper then the emulated sd card :/
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Well, if its not either of those three big names from my last post then you should backup any important data then wipe internal storage.

Get SD Maid from the play store. I use it to find duplicates, ghost files, and other stuff worthy if deletion.
Sent from my Last Ever Samsung Device.

I had a very similar question lately:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2610663
I was missing >50% or my 32gb storage to unknown/other. I tried everything on the market, used computer to delete data, file analysis, nothing helped.
I am running CM10.2 and used the CM setting's app to perform a factory reset (the clockworkmod factory reset does not remove all user data). Apparently this formats your data area, and in my case eliminated the unknown wasted space.

KitKat issue - Unable to delete stuff on ext SD card

Just got my Sony Xperia Z3. Still messing around to get a feel of the UI.
Was not able to uninstall File Commander as I find the UI badly design. So installed ASTRO File Manager, tried deleting a file from ext SD card. pops up a notice saying that due to KitKat design, 'write' to ext SD card is prohibited.
I uninstalled ASTRO File Manager and installed SOLID Explorer, deletion from ext SD card was not allowed as well.
Tried deleting same file using File Commander and it worked
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!
Probably will try File Expert but expecting the same rejection.

It is a well known issue with KitKat and is brought in on purpose by google.
Basically in an effort to increase security protection to the user only system apps can write to the SDcard. There is a way around it but you need root. Just google "Write to SD card KitKat" for further information and how to revert it.

gregbradley said:
It is a well known issue with KitKat and is brought in on purpose by google. Basically in an effort to increase security protection to the user only system apps can write to the SDcard.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You believe in Santa Claus, too ?
Google tries to force you into using their cloud services, that's all magic.
But it's correct: You need root to edit the file platform.xml. After doing that, everything is ok again.
But DO NOT ROOT, yet ! You'll lose all DRM keys (making the horribly bad Z3 camera even worse) and X-Reality. And believe me: You really do not want to lose that.

Chefproll said:
You believe in Santa Claus, too ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What does this mean?
Google tries to force you into using their cloud services, that's all magic.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you say so
But it's correct: You need root to edit the file platform.xml. After doing that, everything is ok again.
But DO NOT ROOT, yet ! You'll lose all DRM keys (making the horribly bad Z3 camera even worse) and X-Reality. And believe me: You really do not want to lose that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I know, its an old issue and well known how to get around it. And trust me, if I want to unlock my bootloader I will.

The only way around it is to save files in your File Explorer's App folder. With FX Explorer, for example, save your files into Android/data/nextapp.fx/files/
You'll be able to write and delete all you want.
File Commander works across all folders because it's a system apk.

Presumably with root you could just convert your file manager app of choice to a system app with the likes of Titanium and it would then work ok? Or just use one that uses root anyway (like Root Explorer).

Work root you just add one line to platform.xml and then it works just like it did before
Sent from my D6603 using XDA Free mobile app

3Shirts said:
Presumably with root you could just convert your file manager app of choice to a system app with the likes of Titanium and it would then work ok? Or just use one that uses root anyway (like Root Explorer).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course, with root you can get around any software restriction. However, in 2 - 3 years it'll be moot (hopefully sooner). It's like when Android dropped the menu key and everyone was pissed. After 2 years no one cares about the lack of a menu key anymore.

internal storage problem

my phone can't see its internal storage, though the data is still there. I'm running tin latest developer preview, flashed clean and rooted with code blue. everything was fine, but I dirty flashed xtra smooth 1.5 and then reverted to my stock rooted backup a day later because of battery issues. since then I cannot download any file from the browser, it starts and then says unsuccessful after a second, and I also can't download a file from my google drive. play store works fine however. if I open the aosp gallery the folders for my internal storage images (camera, instagram, vsco, downloaded, etc.) just show as blank, with pictures saying "no thumbnail available." however, videos show blank as well but have the play button, and if I hit it the file will play normally, and if I attach one of the blank images to something like hangouts or an email they will show up. if I try to the back up function of any apps that offer it, like my alarm clock or pedometer it fails. though they can see the old file is there and restore from it. lastly, file explorer programs show my sdcard folder to be empty, though they are obviously not. I generally use es, but have tried several others with the same result. if I view it via twrps file explorer in recovery things are normal. any help?

Read the /sdcard sticky in general

thanks, it is a great sticky, but after reading it i dont see any solution/reference to my problem. the issue is not that data is deleted or corrupt or anything along those lines, it is that my phone- when booted into android- is not seeing my files. the data is there, but something is wrong and i cannot see them. for clarification, its not just /sdcard that is showing as empty in file explorers, /data, /storage and many others are showing empty too, though not everything as folders like /sys and /system are showing up as normal.

Mine is doing the exact same thing and is blowing my mind, it knows the folders are there, it says I have 7 GB full but the folder is emptey in any file explorer

heres the error i get when trying to download a podcast, i get a similar EACCESS permission denied error when trying to back up an app, but like i said, if the app already has a backup on the storage i can restore it no problem
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It's like there is something disabling it from being seen by the system

I had a similar issue, doing this resolved it:
adb shell
su
restorecon -FR /data/media/0

Dr-Smith said:
I had a similar issue, doing this resolved it:
adb shell
su
restorecon -FR /data/media/0
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Thanks bro! This fixed my SD issues!!

Recovered photos from SD card have all the same size

Hello guys.
So, I've been using my SD card as internal storage in my android phone.
My phone broke and I had to factory reset it.
Of course the issue with the SD card is that I am not able to access any files that existed there, anymore. Mainly I care about pictures.
What I did in order to fix this is first of all connect the SD directly to my PC and use various recovery software (testdisk, ZAR, remo recover etc) and none could read anything on the SD card.
The only software that manages to read stuff on it is called Stellar Photo Recovery.
Found 13GB and recovered them, but the result is .ppm files that ALL have the same size! Check the pictures below for more info.
Of course the recovered .ppm files cannot be opened by any software and I am here then in order to ask for advice.
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Thanks in advance for any help.

dimxr said:
Hello guys.
So, I've been using my SD card as internal storage in my android phone.
My phone broke and I had to factory reset it.
Of course the issue with the SD card is that I am not able to access any files that existed there, anymore. Mainly I care about pictures.
What I did in order to fix this is first of all connect the SD directly to my PC and use various recovery software (testdisk, ZAR, remo recover etc) and none could read anything on the SD card.
The only software that manages to read stuff on it is called Stellar Photo Recovery.
Found 13GB and recovered them, but the result is .ppm files that ALL have the same size! Check the pictures below for more info.
Of course the recovered .ppm files cannot be opened by any software and I am here then in order to ask for advice.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here is a thread that was started by a member with the same issue that I attempted to help.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/general/help/corrupted-sd-card-adoptable-storage-t3801250
If you read through the thread, you will see that they came up with a method to recover the data and return the sdcard to a useable/working condition and has posted the instructions. If you read further into the thread, you'll see where they have made improvements in how the process is used. Read all of the posts by that member in that thread and make sure you understand how their original method worked and how their refined methods are implemented vs how they were originally. Pay attention to the changes in the method and where those changes are implemented to make it easier.
Sent from my LGL84VL using Tapatalk

Thank you so much for this. Even though I searched a lot, I wasn't able to trace this, since the word "adoptable" didn't cross my mind.
Will read and post back results.