Question System app "Media Storage" seemingly duplicating all of "media" files - ASUS ROG Phone 5 / 5s

I have a ROG 5 Tencent version with Global ROM, .86 build.
Found out that my storage was for some reason almost full. Checked on Android's storage manager and found that System App "Media Storage" is taking up 36.2GB of space. Also checked with DiskUsage, and it seems this "Media Storage" is exactly the same amount as all data under "media", which would be all videos and downloads (all non-app files). So it seems for some reason the data is being duplicated.
Upon research, I found two things:
1. This also happened to OnePlus users, and apparently the data isn't actually duplicated in Media Storage; it's just incorrectly displayed, and you can go above the displayed storage limit. If this is what is also happening, it's still a problem for me because if I try to sync data from my computer, it'll stop transferring because it'll detect my phone as full.
2. Happened to some users with WhatsApp. Doesn't apply to me because I don't have WhatsApp, nor have I ever installed it on this device.
The "Clear Storage" & "Clear Cache" options for Media Storage are also greyed out, so I have no clue how to proceed.
Anyone else run into this problem? Any solutions?
Edit: updated to .151, problem still exists.

Make sure all critical data is redundantly backed up.
Try force stopping the app. Still can't app clear its data?
Sync is so much easier but I always do cut/paste for backups... once bitten, twice shy.

blackhawk said:
Try force stopping the app. Still can't app clear its data?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Doesn't give me an option to force stop Media Storage.

Could it be an apk with System Administrator rights be locking it out?

blackhawk said:
Could it be an apk with System Administrator rights be locking it out?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Only apps with admin permissions are Find My Device, Nova7, Outlook. They are also all disabled.

reica said:
Only apps with admin permissions are Find My Device, Nova7, Outlook. They are also all disabled.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't understand why it's locked down like that.
Is that normal for that device?

Make sure that under Settings -> Storage you don't have Storage manager enabled.
Media Storage isn't ACTUALLY taking up that space, though. You can't clear the data for it because it's technically not using it. It is just reporting how much data is taken up by media and the system incorrectly displays that as the amount of data used by the app.
If you look in Settings -> Storage and do the math on the totals, you'll find that the total doesn't match the one in the upper left. Taking Media Storage into consideration, I should be at 403 of 256 GB. Media Storage appears as 186 GB and my remaining storage is still 31 GB.

reica said:
I have a ROG 5 Tencent version with Global ROM, .86 build.
Found out that my storage was for some reason almost full. Checked on Android's storage manager and found that System App "Media Storage" is taking up 36.2GB of space. Also checked with DiskUsage, and it seems this "Media Storage" is exactly the same amount as all data under "media", which would be all videos and downloads (all non-app files). So it seems for some reason the data is being duplicated.
Upon research, I found two things:
1. This also happened to OnePlus users, and apparently the data isn't actually duplicated in Media Storage; it's just incorrectly displayed, and you can go above the displayed storage limit. If this is what is also happening, it's still a problem for me because if I try to sync data from my computer, it'll stop transferring because it'll detect my phone as full.
2. Happened to some users with WhatsApp. Doesn't apply to me because I don't have WhatsApp, nor have I ever installed it on this device.
The "Clear Storage" & "Clear Cache" options for Media Storage are also greyed out, so I have no clue how to proceed.
Anyone else run into this problem? Any solutions?
Edit: updated to .151, problem still exists.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi! Quite late to the party, still posting just to ask if you found any solution to this "Media Storage" issue?
My OnePlus 9RT is having the same problem now. What is worst is it is not like just "incorrectly displayed" as some users said on Reddit, here and other forums. Recently my Media Storage size went up to 58Gb and then when I went to install Grid Autosport, which takes around 4Gb space, PlayStore showed me that I have to delete apps to make space for Grid!!! So, that means the Phone is reading this Media Storage app space, its not just a virtual/incorrectly displayed number!

jitd said:
Hi! Quite late to the party, still posting just to ask if you found any solution to this "Media Storage" issue?
My OnePlus 9RT is having the same problem now. What is worst is it is not like just "incorrectly displayed" as some users said on Reddit, here and other forums. Recently my Media Storage size went up to 58Gb and then when I went to install Grid Autosport, which takes around 4Gb space, PlayStore showed me that I have to delete apps to make space for Grid!!! So, that means the Phone is reading this Media Storage app space, its not just a virtual/incorrectly displayed number!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you are confusing the words with a visual misrepresentation that can be ignored. As I posted last year, it means that media storage "thinks" the files are there and is telling the system that space is used, but the physical files don't exist. It is not that the space is actually available and it's being shown incorrectly. It's that the system is reserving that space for files that aren't present. If that weren't the case, then the answer would be simply to clean out your storage of any files you don't need and free up the space.

twistedumbrella said:
I think you are confusing the words with a visual misrepresentation that can be ignored. As I posted last year, it means that media storage "thinks" the files are there and is telling the system that space is used, but the physical files don't exist. It is not that the space is actually available and it's being shown incorrectly. It's that the system is reserving that space for files that aren't present. If that weren't the case, then the answer would be simply to clean out your storage of any files you don't need and free up the space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which simply means what the OP posted. At the end of the day that space cannot be used and that's a problem. Technically you are correct but you have killed the discussion on this thread by twisting it into another direction. So let me try to bring it back.
Mediastorage is a problem! It is causing the system to reserve space unnecessarily. For every 1 GB that I consume, mediastorage consumes and equal amount of space (at least from the OS's POV).
@twistedumbrella Stop saying that it is a "visual representation". And you're 100% wrong. The answer isn't to clean out our own files. The answer is to stop mediastorage from causing the OS to reserve space unnecessarily.

mugenishere said:
Which simply means what the OP posted. At the end of the day that space cannot be used and that's a problem. Technically you are correct but you have killed the discussion on this thread by twisting it into another direction. So let me try to bring it back.
Mediastorage is a problem! It is causing the system to reserve space unnecessarily. For every 1 GB that I consume, mediastorage consumes and equal amount of space (at least from the OS's POV).
@twistedumbrella Stop saying that it is a "visual representation". And you're 100% wrong. The answer isn't to clean out our own files. The answer is to stop mediastorage from causing the OS to reserve space unnecessarily.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting. This problem is being seen on other makes as well. May be related to the OS version or the media storage app; they're all might be using the same open source code.
Or both together. Scoped storage sucks... just a guess.
Back up all critical data redundantly first then play with it to try to find the app(s) responsible as in indicated in the link above. Do some more Google searches for the same issue, it doesn't have to be your exact make/model neccesarily to apply.
Is it a clean load loaded after firmware upgrades? Was it hand loaded rather than a automated transfer app like Samsung's SmartSwitch? These apps are known troublemakers when going cross device or platform.
Try to develop a work around... more fun times with Android.
Play with it.

Got my Oneplus 9 same problem with os11. maybe only google can resolve this issue?

Were you able to fix or found a fix on this, i just checked mine and this "Media" app taking a lot of storage on my Xiaomi 11t pro

Related

Help Resyncing everything / Reset?

So I have this problem with storagespace and reserved space.
2,5gb Music
175mb videos,
25mb pictures
3,5GB!!! Reserved space from other computers Even though I have set Reserved settings to 0%.
There is probably something wrong here so I need to resync everything.
So the question is, how do I do that without loosing my apps?
Is a hardreset the only way?
If so, will I get back the non free apps?
Is there a smarter way than hard reseting?
Experiences I made concerning this is that most often a simple soft reset (just shut down and restart the device) frees some space. If that doesn't help, you can delete all your synched data and resynch it again. This way you won't lose your apps. Deleting your data is quite simple. Launch Zune and go to settings. On the top of the list it says "synchronisation settings" or something similar. Choose that and scroll down in the right part of the window. On the very bottom there are two options to choose from. The left one should say "delete my data" or so (I have the German version, so I don't exactly know what it is called in the English version).
Thanx! I will try that!
But I think there is some app-installation etc that has screwed upp the memory on the phone. And to get rid of that I guess a hard-reset is the only way?
Possibly. But most storage related issue I came across so far where always caused by an aborted or a somehow erroneous synchronisation.
nizzon said:
So I have this problem with storagespace and reserved space.
2,5gb Music
175mb videos,
25mb pictures
3,5GB!!! Reserved space from other computers Even though I have set Reserved settings to 0%.
There is probably something wrong here so I need to resync everything.
So the question is, how do I do that without loosing my apps?
Is a hardreset the only way?
If so, will I get back the non free apps?
Is there a smarter way than hard reseting?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think if you sync on more than one pc it duplicates the storage.
Or... That space is where your apps are stored.
Sent from my SGH-i917 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App

[Q] Where Is My Internal Storage?

Hi all,
I am using a stock ROM on my Inspire 4G. For some time now, I have been getting this message: "Low on space: Phone storage space is getting low." I do have a lot of apps installed, but I have moved every movable app larger than 1MB onto my SD card, and I have continued to get the message. Today I reached the point where I cannot even upgrade an app. I am showing 70.34MB of available space.
I have searched Market for something that would tell me what's using all my storage, but everything I found is limited to external/SD card storage. Can anyone tell me what else I can do to most effectively recover some storage? What are the most likely culprits?
Thanks!
search the android market. Diskview.
not much else you can do without root access to that partition
I could be very wrong on this, but from what I understand the internal storage is partitioned in a way that most of it is not usable for general use. I have rooted my phone and switched rooms and I still only have a little over a gig of memory on my phone for apps and such
From the House of the Rising Sun using IceColdSandwich
Barkt said:
I could be very wrong on this, but from what I understand the internal storage is partitioned in a way that most of it is not usable for general use. I have rooted my phone and switched rooms and I still only have a little over a gig of memory on my phone for apps and such
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
4gb internal storage on specs and around 1gb is 'usable'.
However, OP's issue is that he's out of internal storage space. I do know that there have been issues with other devices where moving apps to sdcard still left a copy on the internal storage.
OP: Might consider doing a bit of data cleaning rather than app moving.
Even when you move apps to the SD card, it still leaves a little bit of the app in internal. So if you really have a lot of apps, you're going to have to remove something. Unless there is something else wrong. I have around 150 apps installed, with everything that can be put on SD put there, and I have around 650MB still available.
Thanks, everyone, for your replies. I've been really slow getting back to this because I've had other issues I've had to deal with. I did move absolutely every movable app onto the SD card, but it didn't help.
Wolamok, I had assumed I would have to remove some data, but what? I had about 2300 contacts, many of which were duplicates. While I was cleaning them up in Outlook, I decided to delete them ALL from my phone to see what memory I could free up.. A few contacts were repopulated from social media, but only 60 or 70. However, I 'me still out of of memory and getting notifications, and I still can't so much as upgrade an app.
I feel really stupid, because on my Pocket PCs and Windows Mobile devices, I knew exactly where to look for data and what to remove, but I feel totally lost here.
I don't even know which apps to uninstall, because I don't know which ones have left pieces around in internal memory and how much.
Any more ideas, anyone?
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
I forgot to mention that while I appreciated the Diskview suggestion, I can't get it to run. I don't know if you my memory is too low to even do that, but it says it's analyzing the SD card and never finishes.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
MagicSpeller said:
I don't even know which apps to uninstall, because I don't know which ones have left pieces around in internal memory and how much.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whenever you uninstall an app, be sure to clear cache and data for it first. And force stop it if that option isn't grayed out. Then there shouldn't be any remnants of it.
When you go into manage applications, you should be able to get an idea of where the most storage is being used. The amount that is listed for each app is only internal storage if you're on the "downloaded" or "all" tabs. So even if an app is on the SD card, what's listed is how much internal storage it is using.
Bottom line is, if you're hurting for storage, uninstall anything you don't really use. Even all those free Amazon games. You can always reinstall them in the future. Hope that helps to give you an idea of what's hogging storage.
pazzo02 said:
Whenever you uninstall an app, be sure to clear cache and data for it first. And force stop it if that option isn't grayed out. Then there shouldn't be any remnants of it.
When you go into manage applications, you should be able to get an idea of where the most storage is being used. The amount that is listed for each app is only internal storage if you're on the "downloaded" or "all" tabs. So even if an app is on the SD card, what's listed is how much internal storage it is using.
Bottom line is, if you're hurting for storage, uninstall anything you don't really use. Even all those free Amazon games. You can always reinstall them in the future. Hope that helps to give you an idea of what's hogging storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks a lot for the reply. By the time I saw it, I had already gotten so frustrated I had followed you advice in advance. I deleted all the apps I'd installed and was going to try out "some day"--and yes, that included all the free Amazon games I'd never played!
I was surprised to see how much space was being used by apps that supposedly were on the SD card.
I hadn't thought of clearing cache and data, and I guess I'm too late for that now, but I'll definitely keep that in mind for the future.
Thanks again!

[Q] Insufficient storage

My Nexus S (GT-I9020)keeps giving me an "insufficient storage" message. Particularly when updating "Google Newstand".
So I have cleared out lots of Photos and music and stuff. Cleared caches. Moved stuff to SD etc. Still keeps happening.
So while connected to my PC by USB, I ran "Treesize" on it, and it tells me that I have 9.87Gb free. What is the problem?
Of the few Gigabytes that are used, by far the biggest folder is called "DCIM", I know that this is where pictures are stored, but I have cleared out loads of photos. The largest file in there is called " thumbdata", at 966Mb by far the largest file on the entire phone. What is this waste of space? Can I delete it?
It seems that whenever I take a pic. with my phone, it is stored there, then a little while later a second copy appears thanks to Google upload or something, but the new copy is not as high res as the original. I do want Google to upload my photos back to my PC, but why does it have to send them back to the phone? How do I stop this? I spend too much time deleting copies of pics that are already on the phone in original. I think that the thumbnails folder is a result of all this.
The biggest memory hog after DCIM is Clockwork Mod, within it a folder called "blobs". What is it and can I delete it?
The Next biggest memory hog is called "TWRP". What is it? Can I delete it?
Is there a guide to what all these things mean and do, for us learners?
monkey shoulder said:
My Nexus S (GT-I9020)keeps giving me an "insufficient storage" message. Particularly when updating "Google Newstand".
So I have cleared out lots of Photos and music and stuff. Cleared caches. Moved stuff to SD etc. Still keeps happening.
So while connected to my PC by USB, I ran "Treesize" on it, and it tells me that I have 9.87Gb free. What is the problem?
Of the few Gigabytes that are used, by far the biggest folder is called "DCIM", I know that this is where pictures are stored, but I have cleared out loads of photos. The largest file in there is called " thumbdata", at 966Mb by far the largest file on the entire phone. What is this waste of space? Can I delete it?
It seems that whenever I take a pic. with my phone, it is stored there, then a little while later a second copy appears thanks to Google upload or something, but the new copy is not as high res as the original. I do want Google to upload my photos back to my PC, but why does it have to send them back to the phone? How do I stop this? I spend too much time deleting copies of pics that are already on the phone in original. I think that the thumbnails folder is a result of all this.
The biggest memory hog after DCIM is Clockwork Mod, within it a folder called "blobs". What is it and can I delete it?
The Next biggest memory hog is called "TWRP". What is it? Can I delete it?
Is there a guide to what all these things mean and do, for us learners?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
how many apps in your device? u can check your remaining storage at setting>apps>downloaded...if the remaining is under 100mb...u need to delete some apps to update some apps...
Re:insufficient storage
cshnz said:
how many apps in your device? u can check your remaining storage at setting>apps>downloaded...if the remaining is under 100mb...u need to delete some apps to update some apps...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have 51 countable icons for apps, 102 in the list of "All apps." which includes all sorts of android stuff.
Under "downloaded" (36 apps) internal storage shows 784Mb used, 224Mb free.
Under USB it shows 3.4Gb used, 9.9Gb free. Aha! so that's what Treesize is looking at.
I get it, my 1Gb of internal storage is being used up. I will try and move more apps to USB.
Is that it?
also check your system partition, google apps often go there, if you're not rooted you wont be able to free space on it, the system partition is about 500MB large so it gets easily filled up, it contains your android rom and system apps
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
monkey shoulder said:
I have 51 countable icons for apps, 102 in the list of "All apps." which includes all sorts of android stuff.
Under "downloaded" (36 apps) internal storage shows 784Mb used, 224Mb free.
Under USB it shows 3.4Gb used, 9.9Gb free. Aha! so that's what Treesize is looking at.
I get it, my 1Gb of internal storage is being used up. I will try and move more apps to USB.
Is that it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes i think you must move some apps to sd, or delete it.... hope it will work

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?!). :/

1.2gb of space available but cant install apps

Hi, i am tired and stressed from researching, i cannot find a solution to this problem and i have come here for professional help.
The problem, i was going to install a game(32mb) through google play, and when the download finishes i get the insufficient storage message which is weird considering i always watch and keep track of my storage space, so i clear some cache and decide to download and once again i get the message, this time i decide to delete useless stuff via CCleaner lite and delete useless apps, i download again, and no space message again, i checked my total available space and it says 1.2gb
id place some screenshots but i have another problem with phone that makes me unable to browse my phone via usb on pc's or laptops
im going to check this thread every day, i really need the help, thanks in advance.
A few things to keep in mind:
1. I wont keep uninstalling apps, it works but i cant uninstall important ones
2. I already deleted all of the cache. literally every solution i researched told me obvious stuff i have already done
3. I wont uninstall photos or files
4. Remember i have ''1.2gb of available space'' so no need to do any of the above
5. I acknowledge that sometimes phones might prevent you from downloading apps just to save some space for cache and app data
6. I have a sd card(2gb) but my phone doesnt have the option to move apps to external space and i cant force it even through root
7. I have android 4.0.4
8. My phone is rooted, but its kinda broken(''kingo'' root, not to be confused by ''king'' root), every time the phone restarts or turns off something makes the main root app(the ones that grants root permission to other apps) to get corrupted and not start up(crashes on start) making me having to reinstall it using a backup
1337Potato said:
Hi, i am tired and stressed from researching, i cannot find a solution to this problem and i have come here for professional help.
The problem, i was going to install a game(32mb) through google play, and when the download finishes i get the insufficient storage message which is weird considering i always watch and keep track of my storage space, so i clear some cache and decide to download and once again i get the message, this time i decide to delete useless stuff via CCleaner lite and delete useless apps, i download again, and no space message again, i checked my total available space and it says 1.2gb
id place some screenshots but i have another problem with phone that makes me unable to browse my phone via usb on pc's or laptops
im going to check this thread every day, i really need the help, thanks in advance.
A few things to keep in mind:
1. I wont keep uninstalling apps, it works but i cant uninstall important ones
2. I already deleted all of the cache. literally every solution i researched told me obvious stuff i have already done
3. I wont uninstall photos or files
4. Remember i have ''1.2gb of available space'' so no need to do any of the above
5. I acknowledge that sometimes phones might prevent you from downloading apps just to save some space for cache and app data
6. I have a sd card(2gb) but my phone doesnt have the option to move apps to external space and i cant force it even through root
7. I have android 4.0.4
8. My phone is rooted, but its kinda broken(''kingo'' root, not to be confused by ''king'' root), every time the phone restarts or turns off something makes the main root app(the ones that grants root permission to other apps) to get corrupted and not start up(crashes on start) making me having to reinstall it using a backup
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have plenty of storage but that doesn't mean you have room for apps because apps are installed in /data partition, there is a difference. You have storage space but only a portion of it is allocated as space for apps, the rest is storage. You can repartition the device to give your /data partition more available space. Do not repartition your device unless you understand exactly what you are doing.
I DO NOT PROVIDE HELP IN PM, KEEP IT IN THE THREADS WHERE EVERYONE CAN SHARE
Droidriven said:
You have plenty of storage but that doesn't mean you have room for apps because apps are installed in /data partition, there is a difference. You have storage space but only a portion of it is allocated as space for apps, the rest is storage. You can repartition the device to give your /data partition more available space. Do not repartition your device unless you understand exactly what you are doing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know, but before i could keep installing apps until i had 200mb of space left for app storage, why would it be different now, i have a total of 2gb internal storage small i know, but still no reason to stop being able of installing apps at 1gb left, makes no sense, and i'll research about repartition carefully if there isnt another good answer to my problem
1337Potato said:
I know, but before i could keep installing apps until i had 200mb of space left for app storage, why would it be different now, i have a total of 2gb internal storage small i know, but still no reason to stop being able of installing apps at 1gb left, makes no sense, and i'll research about repartition carefully if there isnt another good answer to my problem
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You might be full of app data from apps you've uninstalled, uninstalled apps can leave data behind, look in your Android/data folder. You might also be storing logs somewhere taking up space.
Have you used any apps to analyze your internal storage? It should tell you everything you have stored there, files sizes and locations.
I DO NOT PROVIDE HELP IN PM, KEEP IT IN THE THREADS WHERE EVERYONE CAN SHARE
Droidriven said:
You might be full of app data from apps you've uninstalled, uninstalled apps can leave data behind, look in your Android/data folder. You might also be storing logs somewhere taking up space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It turns out there was an odex files messing with the instalation, when deleted them i could start installing again, sorry for the trouble and thanks for the help!

Categories

Resources