Database Info

[Q] One X Phone Storage question

Okay so this phone has an internal memory that is split into internal storage (2GB) and phone storage (10GBs). I've been going through the memory and trying to clear it out because it always seems full. After freeing up some space it says I have 1.43GBs being used on my phone storage for all my apps, music (which is really just a couple of podcasts consisting of 550MBs), and my gallery only 90 photos. This leaves only 1.6GB free out of 10 on that partition? Where is all this missing space? I completely cleared the app cache and like I said there is no video or music of any kind. I figured the OS was part of the internal storage as well so what could be taking up the other storage?

I forgot exactly how its split up, and I think whether your are ICS, JB or AOSP it gets displayed a bit differently. But I think its 2 GB for apps, 4 GB for the OS, and 10 GB is user accessible storage (basically an SD card, just internal or "virtual"). I don't think the OS takes any of the 10 GB of user accessible storage ("phone storage").
Are you rooted/bootloader unlocked, and have TWRP backups or Titanium Backup data, because both of those take up lots of space on the SD (phone storage).
Do you have any apps, like games, that may have had additional content data downloaded after you started up the app the first time? These can often take up a lot of space on the SD (phone storage) as well. You will often see them in folders specially named after the app or the software company (such as Gameloft). This data is obviously needed to play the game or run the app.
Also take a look and see if you have a LOST.DIR folder. Sometimes corrupted files will get dumped in here, and never deleted until you do it manually. I think I found a couple hundred MB worth of files in here once. Unless you know you have corrupted files that you want to recover (like photos you took), this data is safe to delete.

Also use es file explorer. Go menu -> manager -> sd card analyst it will tell you where your storage is being used
Sent from my VENOMized HoxL

area51avenger said:
Also use es file explorer. Go menu -> manager -> sd card analyst it will tell you where your storage is being used
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great tip. Thanks. I love ES File Explorer, and its my go-to file browser app for the time being. But I don't think I ever knew that feature existed.

[Q] I have some simple questions about the storage/emulated folder that need answers

The longer I have my Shield Tablet, the internal storage space seems to slowly vanish more and more. I have been constantly clearing cache, as well as uninstalling more and more apps. The entire internal storage folder (labeled storage/sdcard0), takes up a total of only 3.77 GB according to ES File Explorer, yet I have less than 2 GB free. I have noticed there is a folder labeled: storage/emulated. Within this folder are "0" and "legacy"... Both of these folders appear to be complete clones of the sdcard0 folder (each are exactly 3.77 GB as well). All three of these folders add up to equal the total storage used on the internal storage. So can I really only use a third of the internal storage since everything is duplicated 3 times? Is it safe to delete the contents of either of the 2 folders within storage/emulated? What is the purpose of these folders?

They are all the same directory - they're legacy ways of accessing the storage and are kept for backwards compatibility. Erasing any one of them will erase them all.
If you are on lollipop, the reason for shrinking space is usually the linking of apps to sdcard1 either using android, link2sd, Folder Mount, or the like. The lollipop system apparently reads the storage incorrectly, counting the linked files as still being on the sdcard.
Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using Tapatalk

ailima said:
They are all the same directory - they're legacy ways of accessing the storage and are kept for backwards compatibility. Erasing any one of them will erase them all.
If you are on lollipop, the reason for shrinking space is usually the linking of apps to sdcard1 either using android, link2sd, Folder Mount, or the like. The lollipop system apparently reads the storage incorrectly, counting the linked files as still being on the sdcard.
Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is exactly right. I am using FolderMount for all of my big games, and my "storage" tab in settings shows that I am using 18GB (when we all know you only get about 12 usable), yet when I look in TitaniumBackup, SDMaid, or the like, it shows that I still have over 9GB free.
I'd use a different method of checking how much storage you're using, because (like the battery stats) the storage stats are totally broken in Lollipop.

ailima said:
They are all the same directory - they're legacy ways of accessing the storage and are kept for backwards compatibility. Erasing any one of them will erase them all.
If you are on lollipop, the reason for shrinking space is usually the linking of apps to sdcard1 either using android, link2sd, Folder Mount, or the like. The lollipop system apparently reads the storage incorrectly, counting the linked files as still being on the sdcard.
Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My tablet is no longer rooted since I've been on Lollipop so I no longer use Folder Mount. I have moved as many apps as I can to the SD card through the stock app manager. I did use Folder Mount on KitKat, and noticed the weird storage usage, but I did a factory reset after updating to Lollipop. I have installed LOTS of apps, but I reached a point where I wasn't installing any new apps and my storage is slowly disappearing, and now I'm starting to have to uninstall apps... I've had this same issue on every android device I've owned, I eventually have to back up my data and do a factory reset, then reinstall all my apps again, then I suddenly have more free space then before with all the same apps installed...

Is it possible one of the apps you have installed is the culprit? (I.e. filling up your storage?)
Sent from my SHIELD Tablet using XDA Free mobile app

Can you run Disk Usage and Storage Analyzer from the play store?

Apps like Google Plus tend to use a lot of cache and data. Have you checked up on them using something like a disk usage analyzer or 1Tap cleaner?
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I noticed disk usage app even shows some game data that is not moved but just copied to SD.
Also this helps save me up to half a GB.
Its a hidden folder, in DCIM named thumbnails, it keeps a db on all your pictures an can get big quickly if you have a fair amount of pictures an wallpapers.
I found trick here on XDA, sorry can't remember who to credit but, delete that thumbnail folder an contents an make a new file not folder in the DCIM folder named,
.thumbnails an that is gone for good.
WR

ailima said:
Can you run Disk Usage and Storage Analyzer from the play store?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I used the app DiskUsage and a large chunk of used data is "System data"... It seems to fluctuate is size very much, but overall, it keeps increasing in size...

CaleTheKing said:
This is exactly right. I am using FolderMount for all of my big games, and my "storage" tab in settings shows that I am using 18GB (when we all know you only get about 12 usable), yet when I look in TitaniumBackup, SDMaid, or the like, it shows that I still have over 9GB free.
I'd use a different method of checking how much storage you're using, because (like the battery stats) the storage stats are totally broken in Lollipop.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi guys, I'd loveto know that differentmethod of checking used storage
Also, if i keep installing games and moving to sd, won't it give me a "Not enough disk space" due to those wrong stats?
Thanks!

[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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
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.

Insufficient storage available - HTC one S

Hi everyone,
When I try to install new apps or try to update an existing app, I'll receive the error message that I don't have enough storage on my device. In my storage settings I can clearly see, that I have more than 250MB left (of 2,34GB). At the moment I can't even install something that is below 1 MB.
For a long time I was running standard Android 4.1 on this HTC one S and lived with this error... Last week I tried to get to the cause of that issue, because it annoys me every day a little more. I rooted my device and flashed Cyanogenmod 12.1, hoping that this could fix my issue. But it didn't. After installing some apps I'm again facing that annoying issue.
In my storage options I do have the possibility to move apps to "SD". Even though the HTC one S doesn't have an SD slot, I guess this is moving the apps to another partition of the flash. Unfortunately they are not copied completely to the other partition. In some cases only a few MB or sometimes only a few KB are moved to that "SD", according to my storage settings.
I already wiped my cache, but unfortunately that didn' t change anything. Is someone of you running into the same issues or even has a solution for me? If you need more informations or tests, just let me know.
Thank you guys in advance!

I have the same problem and it is just absolutely out of control. I can't understand why this garbage is allowed to happen. I have very few apps, with the biggest being GApps' updated versions. But the phone's storage only seems to be 2GB - which is unusable.
It seems like modern phones use a "dynamic /data" arrangement, where /sdcard is really a virtual path to /data/media (so the sdcard contents actually exist in the /data partition, hence can't be mounted as USB storage or FAT). I'm constantly running into the "insufficient storage" problem with >200MB free - which is hardly enough to even work with anyway.
The problem is made significantly worse by dalvik-cache storing a second copy of the app - so that instead of a 20MB app only taking 20 MB of storage, it really takes about 40MB (or more, depending on extra uncompressed data). Like keeping a copy of the installer along side the actual program, for every program you use on your computer.
I have no need for any "/sdcard" storage, as almost all my data is cloud-based (Dropbox photos, Tidal, Slacker, Spotify music, etc), so I hope to find some way to repartition the internal storage to split it up into 8GB /data with the rest as /sdcard (possibly as low as 4GB), and minimize the /cache partition which is generally unused anyway. It's a damn shame that this isn't given more priority among the people trying to squeeze more /sdcard space (to use with what apps?!). :/

Moving apps to SD & optimize memory on a phone with low memory [REQUIRES ROOT]

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