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So I got the Moto G 1gb, 8 gigs of internal storage version.
I love this phone so far and I've pretty much set it up how I'd like it, but the 8gb internal storage has turned into an issue.
I got Appmanager III, moved pretty much everything to my 32 gig external, but I still have only like 600 mb to spare on the internal, with well over half of the external left over.
Is there another app that will allow me to move all the app data left over in the internal over to the external?
If that's not enough, I'd also be interested in knowing if there's any way I can force the system to use the external as the main storage for all the OS functions. I already used adb to set all the default downloads to the external.
Finally, I'd like to know if custom ROMs like cyanogenmod would use up less storage than the stock OS, or at least let me use more of my internal by reducing the amount of bloatware (why can i NOT get rid of google movies or google+??? come ON)
I'm rooted and have installed twrp so both root and custom recovery solutions are welcome. Thanks for your time and help!
If it were me, I'd make a Nandroid with TWRP on the external as well as a backup with Titanium and then use Titanium to delete unwanted bloatware. Wouldn't that help?
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
bruce7373 said:
If it were me, I'd make a Nandroid with TWRP on the external as well as a backup with Titanium and then use Titanium to delete unwanted bloatware. Wouldn't that help?
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
System apps, ie those that come with the phone such as google movies, live in the system partition. If they are updated then the update lives in the internal storage. Uninstalling via titanium will of course free up both system and internal storage space.
However just disabling them will be sufficient, this will remove all updates from internal storage and just leave the apk in the system partition. Its the internal storage that you want to be less full as this is where user apps, pictures etc all reside (assuming you haven't yet moved them to an SD card).
Disabling is less drastic than uninstalling and is maybe the preferred option in case you otherwise uninstall something that breaks your phone.
I've tried that, but for whatever reason if I disable, say, google play movie or whatever, my phone eventually ends up redownloading them? It's really odd and honestly pretty annoying.
I'd still like to know if there's any way to keep all the main app data on the external or something though. Are Cyanogenmod ROMs installers smaller? I don't need THAT much more space to feel comfortable, having 1 gigabyte would be ok with me. I just don't like having like 600 MB free at most...
EDIT: If I can just move the app data for a few games and Google Chrome, that should fix it, too. Those seem to be the real space hogs, so if I can move those I should be able to handle everything else
EDIT EDIT: Would an app like Link2SD work for this phone or has no one tested that yet?
Hi Tazzypilar, Yes Link2Sd wil work wery well. All wat you have to do is to install MiniTool Partition Wizzard Professional on your PC, then put your micro SD card in the cardreader on your desktop or laptop to make two partitions on your SdMicro card (card must be class 10). Start program MiniTool Partition Wizzard Professional and look for your microSD card on the list with disks. Right click on your removable disk (micro sd card) and you can resize your first Fat32 partition and make it smaller for at least 2 GB. After that you will have 2 GB unused space behind this Fat32 partition. Now click with right mouse on this unused space and choose „Create“ new partition and make it ext4 file system partition. You will be prompt „Are you sure that you want to make ext4 partiton because Windows can't see it ?“ and answare „Yes“ . So, one partition will be Fat32 and you can make it as big as you like depending on the size of your MicroSd card and second should be at least 2GB (or greater - also may be smaller, it's up to you) ext4 partition and there you will move your apps from the internal phone memory.
That's all, after that you have to install Link2Sd from playstore and link apps you like to move to your SdCard. Succes ! If you have more questions jut ask !
Greetz !
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium
Where did my storage go?
Just asked my self a very similar questions
I attachment a screen shot
From the 8gb 3,5 go to Android system
So 4,5gb for internal I thought., but no.
I installed about 2gb of apps and 200mb cache.
Ah I forgot to mention that this is a fresh install after factory reset and still I am missing alot of storage see screen shot
Is this normal? I am on stock not rooted with some apps already moved to SD Any ideas?
Upgrade to android M, use external SD as internal card
Why not upgrade to android M and use phone's feature to use external card as internal card.
sandipkc7 said:
Why not upgrade to android M and use phone's feature to use external card as internal card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am glad you brought this up, guess what I am already on M and using the SD card feature, unfortunately I can only a small portion of the apps move to the SD card the rest stays internal
Look for posts on link2sd, it needs to be a fast card and then formatted using both std FAT and ext (linux) partitions. Then you can move almost everything.
Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk
Though Im using LG H502F. Correct me if Im wrong but I think thats because the internal storage is emulated. Ive been using Link2SD and it works well. I can link app data and external data to the mounted partition. The only difference I noticed was... When opening the app it takes a couple of second or more compared to the unlinked apps... Anyways. Try to check if your storage is emulated. If it is, then that 3GB available space for a stock rom is as good as it gets. Mine have 8GB rom but the end user is only 3GB something.
Sent from my LG-H502 using XDA-Developers mobile app
merlin2380 said:
I am glad you brought this up, guess what I am already on M and using the SD card feature, unfortunately I can only a small portion of the apps move to the SD card the rest stays internal
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Click to collapse
In android M you can "transform" your sd card in internal memory (in Settings>Storage>SdCard>Definitions). If you have a fast 32 Gb card, you can format it to internal and it is as you have 32 Gb internal memory, but your sdcard must "live" with your phone (can't be used as sdcard in other device).
I think that is what @sandipkc7 means.
I did that not very usefull
merlin2380 said:
I did that not very usefull
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Click to collapse
Tried internal storage option in marshmallow and at first i taught it was rubbish, but i kinda left sdcard alone and install another ROM.
So stuff on my internal storage was nowhere to be found. I installed latest recovery (TWRP) Flashed another rom and this is where things started to get interesting.
When i first converted sdcard to use as internal storage my phone was still eating up the internal memory 8GB on the phone.
Now however android system decided to do away with internal 8GB memory and use sdcard as a main storage. my photos are stored there and all data i noticed that almost everything is installed on sdcard now. so my storage is not vanishing away. I have about 1.7GB used on there.
There are some apps that can be moved manually to sdcard storage (converted to internal) - for example some of the system apps and most of google apps stay in phones memory not on sdcard and they can't be moved manually.
So my advise is covert your card to internal memory and then do factory reset or install another ROM.
Option 2 as mentioned above in posts is to use app called Link2SD - it is worth to opt for paid version which gives you more options of what to copy to 2nd partiton of your sdcard.
i have amazon fire 7 (£50 tablet) setup with option 2 - same storage 8GB. It works well. due to lack of marshmallow for this device i cannot use internal sd as an option. I have 2GB used there and rest sits on sdcard. i have installed few resource (storage) hugging apps - 1.2 GB, 2 GB each (gameloft games) - all moved to sd with link2sd app.
on my moto g 2015 i use android build in solution and it works well. You have to keep in mind that with this solution you can't simply copy files to your computer. Sdcard is encrypted at device level and it can only be access via your phone. However you can use any wifi file transfer app to copy some files over or via phones hotspot (i use droid over wifi or web pc suite to name few).
hope this helped a little
sandipkc7 said:
Why not upgrade to android M and use phone's feature to use external card as internal card.
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Click to collapse
honestly, its not worth it to use sdcard as internal, despite the micro sd card being fast, it made my phone ridiculously slow..............
marsrolled said:
honestly, its not worth it to use sdcard as internal, despite the micro sd card being fast, it made my phone ridiculously slow..............
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because of this slow down i did a reset to default settings. This did help and now the phone works much better, just make sure you always have 500MB empty on the internal storage, anything less and tbe phone performance goes down imediatly.
All the talking about this no so vreat sdcardinteral storage feature was too much for my 32 GB samsung evo micro sd card, it died less than 6 months of service. This was already the 2nd from the evo series that hung up on me and let me to dataloss thanks to google drive all was backedup
I will now root the phone and get a custom rom, probaply cm offical
Did you ever find out how to recover that lost 2GB? I have the exact same problem and managed to maybe find the 2GB in the /data folder; however it is sys locked and I'm not ready to root a brand new phone yet.
I have 8 apps installed (not counting google/motorola pre-installed) on my Moto G3 and showing 3.72GB used of 4.53GB available internal. It then shows 1.36 GB used by apps, 1.71 MB by cache. Other 2GB is a mystery?Device storage shows only 16GB used of 37GB availabe due to SD card.
I have the infuse which has a16gb ROM with 12gb internal SD and a 2gb data partition and a galaxy s5 with 16gb ROM which has 12gb storage space that is shared between apps and internal SD. I was wondering if there is a way to setup the infuse to work like the s5 does or at least switch the internal 12gb SD card with the 2gb app storage space. I need lots of room for apps and don't ever even use the internal SD card as I have a 32gb external card in the phone so there is like 12 megs total in use on the internal SD while app storage is completely full with hardly any apps installed. Just kind of seems like a waste to me. Thanks in advanced for any help you might be able to give
diablo5189 said:
I have the infuse which has a16gb ROM with 12gb internal SD and a 2gb data partition and a galaxy s5 with 16gb ROM which has 12gb storage space that is shared between apps and internal SD. I was wondering if there is a way to setup the infuse to work like the s5 does or at least switch the internal 12gb SD card with the 2gb app storage space. I need lots of room for apps and don't ever even use the internal SD card as I have a 32gb external card in the phone so there is like 12 megs total in use on the internal SD while app storage is completely full with hardly any apps installed. Just kind of seems like a waste to me. Thanks in advanced for any help you might be able to give
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not that easy. You would have to re-route (comment out) the line for /data/data in the fstab file on the boot.img ramdisk. If using stock ROM, then you have to make sure all that is signed the way Samsung wants it.
There are some later KK 4.4 ROM's that ignore the datadata partition (my signature has a link that will provide options) but if you have the AT&T model (v.s. Rogers) and still on FY 2.2 or GB 2.3, there does not seem to be an upgrade path anymore (patched bootloader to flash ICS+ is lost).
A simple solution is to get a MicroSD card, split up that MicroSD with a ext2 second partition, and then use Link2SD. Mind you, the apps on the external SD would be slower, but at least you can get more apps that what you could before.
Hope this helps.
I have cyanfox 4.4 kitkat installed on it already. I know there is ways to use external SD as ext4 partition, is there any way to do something like that with internal SD instead.
diablo5189 said:
I have cyanfox 4.4 kitkat installed on it already. I know there is ways to use external SD as ext4 partition, is there any way to do something like that with internal SD instead.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You may be able to figure out a solution with FolderMount (or one of the other options in the following SII thread):
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2548834
Alternatively...
I am curious though, how are your wakelocks? Is your Infuse able to fall asleep? This can be determined by going into Settings > Battery > History Details, and checking the blue bar under "Awake". If it spans the width underneath that title (and the screen has been off for a portion of the uptime), then you have a GMS bug, and is common with most 2014 KK ROMs.
Not to sway you particularly - I compiled a build in 2015 that not only abandons /datadata, but also fixes the GMS bug:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=61012641&postcount=1060
May be worth it, even if only just looking at the post.
Hello Everyone. I have a MOTO G 3rd Gen with a 32 GB Class 10 Sandisk sdcard. I originally posted this issue on the Lenovo Forum MOTO G 3rd Gen - Photo Recovery (can't post a direct link just yet), where they suggested that I look here for advice.
I originally used my sdcard for portable storage, although I had to periodically move my photos from internal storage to the sdcard, I was satisfied with the operation of my phone. However, as I added a few apps, I started to have some issues with running out of space in internal storage IIRC.
Earlier this year, it appears that I picked up a virus, which caused Chrome to always want to open to what seemed to be a malicious page (don't recall exactly what now). I decided to do a factory reset using the Settings option to return to a clean installation of Android. I decided at that time to configure the sdcard as extended internal storage, and the process appeared to work properly.
A few months later, I started getting messages informing me that an app update failed because I had run out out storage. After some investigation, it looked like most (all?) of my apps were continuing to use the built-in internal storage rather than the sdcard's extended storage. I tried uninstalling my apps an then reinstalling them - hoping that reinstalled apps would take up residence on my sdcard but they did not. However, it looked like I had uninstalled a few too many programs and my phone lost a lot of its functionality.
One of the functions that it lost was the ability to connect to my PC with the USB cord. Another was the ability for my google contacts to sync with the phone. Yesterday, I tried everything I could thing of to back up my data but I could not figure out how to get the USB to work properly. I decided that I would do another factory reset and removed the sdcard as I knew a reset would wipe all of my data. I removed my sdcard but the factory reset through Settings did not work this time and I instead had to do a hard factory reset. My phone is now working properly with a minimal number of installed apps.
When I reinstalled my sdcard, my phone does not recognize it and wants to format both as portable and internal storage. I was hoping that it would pick up where it left off.
As a last resort, I thought I might have to format my sd card and then try to recover deleted image files. Do you have any advice about recovering the photos on my sdcard?
The last reply on the Lenovo forum was:
When you formatted the card as internal/adopted the card was encrypted amd the key was stored on the phone in a secure location. A reset has deleted the key.
Your data on the sd card is not recoverable as the card is encrypted and the key is lost.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Essentially, when I configured my phone to use my sdcard as extended internal storage, all I ended up with was encrypted portable storage. I would rather that there was a 3rd option for having unencrypted extended internal storage.
How would I get this into the Android developers suggestion box?
TP380Z said:
The last reply on the Lenovo forum was:
Essentially, when I configured my phone to use my sdcard as extended internal storage, all I ended up with was encrypted portable storage. I would rather that there was a 3rd option for having unencrypted extended internal storage.
How would I get this into the Android developers suggestion box?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, you ended up with encrypted internal storage... The fact that you didn't understand it is the real issue.
Adopted storage is tied to not only the device, but the current installation... When an sd card is adopted as internal storage, a encryption key is generated semi-randomly and the file system is of the card becomes ext4 and encrypted, the system is decrypted automatically on boot because the key is stored in the phone. If you factory reset, it wipes your internal storage, which in this case is your sd card, and you would be fine. If you remove the card and factory reset, the key is gone forever and you have to reformat the card for it to be usable. So everything you were told in the Lenovo forums was correct, and the files are no longer recoverable by any known means.
your SD card would be nolonger useful , sorry to break this to you bro..
if your card is now encrypted state, i heavily doubt it would work again..talking of recovering photos,when encrypted.. HELL NO! it cant..
what i do is :
i always keep my memorycard as Portable, but not as internal to avoid such problems..
incase if i have formatted as internal, then while formatting or resetting.. i would take full bakup, and then Format as portable, then carryon resets..
i know these encryptions would give such a pain..
next time takecare of these issues..
suggestion: what i do is i install Googlephotos, it takes a backup of every photo & video which i have in either SDcard/internal .. so i would take necessary files while taking backup, to save time..
next time you try using GooglePhotos, it takes backup when i keep my phone in charge, (note: my internet is unlimited- so its ok for me)
acejavelin said:
No, you ended up with encrypted internal storage... The fact that you didn't understand it is the real issue..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the very thoughtful reply. I thought that I understood my two sdcard formatting options but I obviously did not. When I first installed my sdcard, I selected portable storage as I did not want my sdcard to be encrypted. Only after discovering that the internal storage of my phone was inadequate for my very limited number of installed apps did I switch to encrypted adopted storage.
If I understand you correctly, the reason that the adopted storage storage is encrypted is because the internal storage is encrypted.
My expectation was that the phone would seamlessly treat the adopted storage as internal storage so I am still at a loss to understand why my phone would not automatically install apps into the available in the adopted storage.
TP380Z said:
Thank you for the very thoughtful reply. I thought that I understood my two sdcard formatting options but I obviously did not. When I first installed my sdcard, I selected portable storage as I did not want my sdcard to be encrypted. Only after discovering that the internal storage of my phone was inadequate for my very limited number of installed apps did I switch to encrypted adopted storage.
If I understand you correctly, the reason that the adopted storage storage is encrypted is because the internal storage is encrypted.
My expectation was that the phone would seamlessly treat the adopted storage as internal storage so I am still at a loss to understand why my phone would not automatically install apps into the available in the adopted storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, anytime the SD card is adopted as internal storage it is encrypted... This is a privacy/security measure by Google and is not optional and it doesn't matter if your original internal storage was encrypted or not. Adopted storage basically brings the SD card into the "internal family" and it cannot be used elsewhere. Period (OK, yes, I know there is a way to get the encryption key and mount the volume in Linux, but it is still not perfect).
The reason it still wasn't treated as you expect is probably 2-fold... First, the Moto G3 has a tendency to miss the last step of adoption, called data migration, which is the act of moving existing data to the card and it needs to be initiated manually in many cases. Until this is done, the card is not used by Android except when you specify it because it doesn't think the card is ready yet. This can be done in Settings - Storage then selecting the 3 dot menu and Migrate Data. If this option doesn't appear or is grayed out, then the migration completed successfully (or you are using the card as portable storage, obviously).
The second reason is apps themselves... some of them have not been fully updated to the API standard used by Marshmallow and just don't honor the request to use the card as internal, and Android has a facility to allow this to happen for compatibility. It just uses the internal storage of the device so the app works. Some apps specifically request to be only on real device internal storage for whatever reason as well.
nandakis4 said:
your SD card would be nolonger useful , sorry to break this to you bro..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. Your sympathy is appreciated.
nandakis4 said:
if your card is now encrypted state, i heavily doubt it would work again..talking of recovering photos,when encrypted.. HELL NO! it cant..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I put my sdcard back in my phone just now and it did not recognize it. However, when I went to Settings > Storage and USB, I had no problem formatting it as portable storage.
nandakis4 said:
what i do is :
i always keep my memorycard as Portable, but not as internal to avoid such problems..
incase if i have formatted as internal, then while formatting or resetting.. i would take full bakup, and then Format as portable, then carryon resets..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I expect that this will once again cause me to have app storage space issues. I only ran into problems with data backups once I started uninstalling apps. I had hoped that uninstalling and then reinstalling apps would then cause the phone to correctly place them into adopted storage. I cannot believe that I was so careless as to not have downloaded my photos earlier but here we are.
After apparently successfully formatting my sdcard as portable storage, I went back and converted to adopted internal storage (also apparently successfully) just now. I've re-installed MS OneNote and my phone is reporting that is taking up 85.70 MB in Internal Storage. When I go to Storage and USB, I see that 44.46 MB is used of 28.32 GB of SanDisk SD Card and 3.00 GB of 4.53 GB is being used of Internal Storage. When I reinstall 63.40 MB MS Word, I see that I'm now using 2.97 GB of Internal Storage and 173 MB of SanDisk SD Card.
[As of 1:50 pm, my phone is now reporting using 3.00 GB of Internal Storage and 137 MB of SanDisk SD Card.]
It looks like adopted internal storage is working properly. I never previously suspected that there was a problem with adopted storage and installed several large apps. The storage space problem surfaced only when there was a MS OneNote update that would not install because of insufficient internal storage space.
nandakis4 said:
suggestion: what i do is i install Googlephotos, it takes a backup of every photo & video which i have in either SDcard/internal .. so i would take necessary files while taking backup, to save time..
next time you try using GooglePhotos, it takes backup when i keep my phone in charge, (note: my internet is unlimited- so its ok for me)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! I will try GooglePhotos. I hope I can set it up to only do backups when I'm connected to WIFI.
So a couple months ago i downgraded from android nougat to CM 13 on my osprey 8GB variant, when I went into my storage section i see that it says that I only have 4GB of internal memory (TOTAL) So I quickly flashed another MM roms like MIUI rom or dirty unicorns to see if the problem was my memory and it still showed only half my storage, the only MM rom that displays my whole storage is Resurrection Remix and idk why (btw my memory works perfectly on any Nougat rom I flash but when I plug my phone into a PC it only shows 4GB, same thing happens with file explorers, they only show half the memory)
Could anyone help me solve this? thanks in advance
miapes said:
So a couple months ago i downgraded from android nougat to CM 13 on my osprey 8GB variant, when I went into my storage section i see that it says that I only have 4GB of internal memory (TOTAL) So I quickly flashed another MM roms like MIUI rom or dirty unicorns to see if the problem was my memory and it still showed only half my storage, the only MM rom that displays my whole storage is Resurrection Remix and idk why (btw my memory works perfectly on any Nougat rom I flash but when I plug my phone into a PC it only shows 4GB, same thing happens with file explorers, they only show half the memory)
Could anyone help me solve this? thanks in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you're saying Nougat shows 8GB in settings/storage? And file explorers in Nougat?
KrisM22 said:
So you're saying Nougat shows 8GB in settings/storage? And file explorers in Nougat?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, all nougat roms show my correct storage space but file explorers always show half (4GB) no matter which rom im using
miapes said:
Yes, all nougat roms show my correct storage space but file explorers always show half (4GB) no matter which rom im using
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
File explorers only show the space available to the user.
Explaining more elaborately, I'm using solid explorer. It shows internal storage as 4.54GB. This 4.54GB space consists of the internal storage and the /data partition.
The remaining space is used by the /system and other partitions.
So no matter which ROM you are on, all file explorers will only show 4.5GB storage. There is nothing wrong with the ROM or your phone.
Even though the box of the phone says it has 8GB storage, entire 8GB are not available to the user. About 3GB is required for the system and Android OS. If you check the 16GB variant, you'll see that file explorers will show around 12GB space.
adityak1303 said:
File explorers only show the space available to the user.
Explaining more elaborately, I'm using solid explorer. It shows internal storage as 4.54GB. This 4.54GB space consists of the internal storage and the /data partition.
The remaining space is used by the /system and other partitions.
So no matter which ROM you are on, all file explorers will only show 4.5GB storage. There is nothing wrong with the ROM or your phone.
Even though the box of the phone says it has 8GB storage, entire 8GB are not available to the user. About 3GB is required for the system and Android OS. If you check the 16GB variant, you'll see that file explorers will show around 12GB space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah that could be it since it says that my system takes 3.50 GB I only have 5 left, thank you I dont know why I hadn't realized that
Hi,
my Z3's internal memory is always full... 16 GB are surely not enough. Problem is, there are some apps that store data in the internal memory and they have no setting to change this. I already deleted all apps which were dispensable and moved all possible apps to sd card, using system menu.
Does anyone have an idea how to solve this? I rooted my Z3 this way: https://forum.xda-developers.com/z3/general/recovery-root-mm-575-291-lb-t3435214
And I have Xposed installed. Unfortunately its module XInternalSD does not help in this respect though.
Is it for example possible to permanently mount folders on sd card as internal folders? Manually or with some tool?
Thank you
Look here under "further hints" to get an idea what you can do about that.
Mr.Tom_Tom said:
Look here under "further hints" to get an idea what you can do about that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks!
So you think that an SD card partly formatted as adoptable storage would be the solution?
Do you know if this will work with stock Android 6.0.1?
ThemGo said:
So you think that an SD card partly formatted as adoptable storage would be the solution?
Do you know if this will work with stock Android 6.0.1?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not exactly sure, haven't used a stock based ROM since years. But that feature was introduced with Android 6, so it might work. As a LineageOS developer, I recommend switching to an Lineage ROM (or any derivative thereof) of course.
Here is an approach using symlinks. Looks quite good. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/pull/9015#issuecomment-671271504