My Device:
I am using a Galaxy S7 SM-G930F 32GB Exynos running IronMan-Rom V1.2.0 and have TWRP 3.0.2-4 and the phone is rooted.
The Issue:
Something is using 13.85GB on my internal SD/Storage (see attached screenshots) I discovered this yesterday lunch time and have since spent a few hours on here and other forums across the inter-webs trying to get to the bottom of the issue. To try and discount and head off any none relevant data/answers related o the issue below is a list of what I have done so far -
Its no app cache related, because wiping the delvic and data cache from TWRP did nothing to change the other storage figure.
I deleted every scrape of data from the internal Storage/SD manually and also wiped internal Storage/SD from TWRP and no effect.
Its not app related and I have checked all my app caches and the 10 largest don't account for a fraction of the 13.85GB.
Auto update in the Google play has always been set to disable since I installed the ROM, so it not caching anything
I type *#9900# and deleted the dev/cat log, and this made no difference.
I tried SD maid, It found 2GB which I removed, didn't effect the internal storage and just broke google play services causing to it to constantly FC - utterly pointless app.
I have tried several other SD tools (SD tools, OneTool, CCleaner and numbers our SD manager type apps from the playstore to name a few) to try and ascertain what exactly is using the space in the internal storage and nothing so far has shone any light on the subject.
I have manually rum TRIM via Lspeed app and that made no difference.
DiskUseage (see screenshot) is showing it as 'System Data', but I am unable to browse or select it - and it doesn't make any sense its called that either.
My knowledge of linux is limited, but I am wondering if the internal storage is an actual drive and not a symbolic link to another location, if that's the case where is the other location so I can see if I can clean out the phantom data from there.
Doing a factory reset does indeed remove the 'phantom' 13.85GB of data, but I absolutely do not see why this extreme measure has to be taken. There surely has to be a reasonable explanation and fix for this?! As I would prefer not to have to spend a chunk of my weekend setting up my bloody phone all over again due to have to factory reset.
So while doing another search on the playstore for tools to help me, I found a tool called 'Diskinfo' and this showed one of the mount names for the internal storage as /Data. I then reinstalled TotalCommander, did a properties check on that folder and found 17.GB of data in that folder. So am gonna painstakingly go through that folder to see if there is one that roughly matches the 13.85GB mentioned in the OP.
I then found the mysterious phantom data, it was all the files I have placed into 'privatemode' So as I now understand it (privateMode), instead of just encrypting the data where it was on the external SD card, it moves the data to the internal storage/SD card. So I will be looking for an alternative app to private mode.
Hey. I'm having that issue with a costumer. I would like to know how you erased and/or solve that problem. Thank You and very helpful info.
Eventually found file '0' using an app called SD Card Manager - Samsung Tab A Android 5. Removed 4gb of data. Excellent!
I seem to be having a similar issue on my s9, I've only had it since early February this year. My apps is only 10gb, and I have ~34gb of files that on there, yet my 60gb is nearly full
Can someone help me, please??
I have an Edge phone that has almost all of my Internal Storage gone!
I have 64.00 GB and 19.62GB is taken up by "Apps", how do I fix this??
I'm not using that many Apps, so I don't understand why this is happening....please help!
Ok so what if you are not using private mode? How do you remove this data without doing a hard reset? I can see it on my disk but can't get rid of it? I have never used private mode on my phone before, used CCleaner and there is still about 17 gigs worth of **** stuck on my phone.
b1k3rdude said:
So while doing another search on the playstore for tools to help me, I found a tool called 'Diskinfo' and this showed one of the mount names for the internal storage as /Data. I then reinstalled TotalCommander, did a properties check on that folder and found 17.GB of data in that folder. So am gonna painstakingly go through that folder to see if there is one that roughly matches the 13.85GB mentioned in the OP.
I then found the mysterious phantom data, it was all the files I have placed into 'privatemode' So as I now understand it (privateMode), instead of just encrypting the data where it was on the external SD card, it moves the data to the internal storage/SD card. So I will be looking for an alternative app to private mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello, i have the same problem. Have you been able to recovery/find that data from the privatemode? My brother's S7e is on some Note8 rom and i can't find anything 'private mode' in the Settings. He has 300mb free of 24gb and literally not a single picture on his Internal storage.
Imotep95 said:
Hello, i have the same problem. Have you been able to recovery/find that data from the privatemode? My brother's S7e is on some Note8 rom and i can't find anything 'private mode' in the Settings. He has 300mb free of 24gb and literally not a single picture on his Internal storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just do a search in setting for 'private mode' and disable it, at some point your brother has enabled to password protect some files on the device.
More relevant info here - https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/what-is-private-mode-and-how-do-i-use-it/
All this is happening to me and my private mode is off. I literally copied and pasted all of my files from my phone storage onto the computer to relief the size, again, plus the CClear app, and the dent released around 2gb.
12gb is used on a 32gb phone, removing everything it is at 29.2gb maxed out.
This is nuts...
I clear my phone out every couple of months. Images to keep on the computer, removing unnessisary things. Private mode has always been disabled... What do I need to do?
Rrutwi363o said:
All this is happening to me and my private mode is off. I literally copied and pasted all of my files from my phone storage onto the computer to relief the size, again, plus the CClear app, and the dent released around 2gb.
12gb is used on a 32gb phone, removing everything it is at 29.2gb maxed out.
This is nuts...
I clear my phone out every couple of months. Images to keep on the computer, removing unnessisary things. Private mode has always been disabled... What do I need to do?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This sounds really familiar, any progress?
Is anybody know how to recover deleted files,images/photos?
My photos/images got deleted by SD maid
So when i use it i accidentally clicked something in SD maid that delete all of my images and photos
-My photos is gone
-whatsapp images is gone too
-photos , images is gone
Are they deleted permanently?
i tried recover apps in my phone , but all of that apps dint work..
Is there anyway to recover it??
Related
Hi all
I have just installed CyanogenMod 7 on my HTC Desire.
I partitioned my 16GB Class 10 MicroSD card into a 14GB FAT32 partition and a 2GB ext3 partition. I installed DarkTremor's apps2sd scripts, and the apps2sd gui. I set it to save apps to the SD card, and to move the dalvik cache to the SD card.
Everything was working well: I was able to install apps, and they were going to the SD card (had they not, I would have hit the limit of the Desire's internal storage!). Rebooting didn't negatively affect anything - I rebooted several times and the apps were still there.
Then, when I opened the Theme Explorer, the phone just hung. It didn't respond to any input, from the touch screen to pressing or long pressing the power button. Eventually, in desperation, I took the battery out to do a hard reset.
When the phone booted back up, all the apps I had just installed were gone. Their icons remained on the homepage, but with the generic Android icon instead of their actual icon. They were missing from the ADWLauncher panel. The apps are still present in the list of apps, but are missing their icons and proper names. Instead they are displayed with a generic Android icon, and their "long-form" name, for example "com.amazon.kindle".
In addition to all the apps I had installed being missing, certain apps that came with CyanogenMod were also missing, such as: ROM Manager and the program that lists the apps with root permissions (I forget the name). Also, the Market application is missing. However, the calendar, messages, Google Talk, Theme Chooser, etc are all still present and working.
I tried rebooting the phone multiple times, as well as unmounting and remounting the SD card, with no improvement.
Using the terminal emulator, I can see that /sd-ext still has five directories: app, app-private, dalvik-cache, data, lost+found. However, all these directories, including the /sd-ext/app directory, are empty.
Running a2sd reinstall goes through the list of apps, but for each app that is missing, it says that it cannot find the .apk file for that app.
I suppose, then, that I have two questions:
1. Can I restore my apps somehow?
2. If not, and I have to reinstall, how can I prevent this from happening again?
(At the root of both of these is the question "why did this happen?" so if anyone knows that, that would be a great help too!)
Thank you all in advance - please let me know if there's any other information I can provide.
I have a similar problem with my Samsung Galaxy S2 on Sprint. I used Apps2SD by Sam Lu to move many of my apps over to my new 32 gig SD Card. After a bit I realized that I had moved many of the apps over that should have stayed on the main internal storage, mainly because of widgets. So I moved many of them back.
Shortly after doing that I was at a retreat with my phone on airplane mode to preserve battery life. I took some pictures and videos, read my Kindle app and Bible and then plugged it in to charge. The next day several of the pictures and videos I took showed up as a black icon and were not accessible. Then I noticed that all the apps that I had moved to the SD card were "greyed out" and even some of the apps that I had moved back to the internal storage. The phone then told me the SD card needed to be formatted.
Since then I have tried to use file recovery software to recover missing files on the SD card and it finds hundreds of photos and several videos, but nothing else. So the big question is, where are my apps? I hope you find a solution to your issue because it may be the same solution for my issue.
Sincerely,
Nathan
Hey there guys...
To start with i have my S3 two days now and i absolutely love this phone...:')
But,after installing lots of games my internal memory has gone full and i can't download any data in-game because i have low storage space...
My external sd on the other hand is around 10gb free but when i try to move the data to the same folder on the external the data isn't identified by the game and it asks me to download again?
It has become really frustrating,it seems i can't do anything about it...
Any suggestions to try?
Cheers,George
As the system now uses unified storage all apps will remain on internal memory; moving the data alone to an external SD card will have no use without altering the application to look for that location for its data. i.e. in the GS2 you had a move to SD option since the phone was partitioned. With the S3 however this option is not there which means that when an application is downloaded all of its information needs to be stored on the internal storage. When the "Move to SD" option was selected within the S2 or prior phones, it informs the application that its new location is within x folder rather than the folder it was originally downloaded too. Since this option is no longer there then the application has no way of being told where its new location is.
Maybe move to SD could be an add-on with a mod/hack but I am not sure if this is possible. Maybe check with a developer?
Have you got a prior Android phone? Maybe install the application on to it; use the "Move to SD" option and see if that will allow it? It's just a suggestion; if you don't have a different Android phone I can try it for you.
Edit: Just tried it; the phone itself doesn't even check for applications stored within an external SD. Sorry man - the only way around it would be a mod/custom/hack (if possible).
T__ said:
As the system now uses unified storage all apps will remain on internal memory; moving the data alone to an external SD card will have no use without altering the application to look for that location for its data. i.e. in the GS2 you had a move to SD option since the phone was partitioned. With the S3 however this option is not there which means that when an application is downloaded all of its information needs to be stored on the internal storage. When the "Move to SD" option was selected within the S2 or prior phones, it informs the application that its new location is within x folder rather than the folder it was originally downloaded too. Since this option is no longer there then the application has no way of being told where its new location is.
Maybe move to SD could be an add-on with a mod/hack but I am not sure if this is possible. Maybe check with a developer?
Have you got a prior Android phone? Maybe install the application on to it; use the "Move to SD" option and see if that will allow it? It's just a suggestion; if you don't have a different Android phone I can try it for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank's for the answer...
In my galaxy s 1 i had no problem having the games data on the sd card,i havent moved and application to the sd but i had the data on sd and everything worked great...now...i don't get it....:/
nfsmw_gr said:
Thank's for the answer...
In my galaxy s 1 i had no problem having the games data on the sd card,i havent moved and application to the sd but i had the data on sd and everything worked great...now...i don't get it....:/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did check for you; the S3 physically doesn't look for application data in the external SD (I edited original post after testing few things).. There probably are ways around it as mentioned but you would need to speak with developers for further insight.
If worst comes to worst application developers may have to implement a look in x location first, if no data found, look "here" in to their applications.
As the phone is unified storage you can store applications in the full ~12GB storage space (All the ones I have, have roughly 11.3GB after OS and all is on it) so have you used the phones storage itself for only applications; and the SD for media etc?
I am interested to know how you have managed to fill at least 11GB of space with applications; how many do you have? How is the performance of the phone with this many applications on it? Any lag navigating (I know there shouldn't be with quad core processor - but it's interesting to know if hundreds of applications cause lag between screen scrolling).
You can use an app called directory bind to link the game data on the SD to a mounting point on the internal SD. Search for it and you'll find it, not sure if I got it here or the play store.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
Yup, there's directory topic on forum, as well as working 'gl to sd' app in play store. It is not just for gameloft games.
Sent from my SGH-I747M
Thank you all guys!!
Well i filled it with lots of games that's why i don't have much space available!
No the phone is flying,it doesn't lag at all!
I use Dragon Ics rom and Siyah Kernel...no oc....
I'll try directory bind and post back soon!
To put applications on the sdcard, you could use symlinking (confirmed this works myself).
Install the application, then go to /data/app and move the apk file to your sdcard (/mnt/extSdCard) or inside a folder on your sdcard.
Then type ln -s /mnt/extSdCard/your-apk.apk /data/app/your-apk.apk
Hi guys, hope someone can help me, I have 2 problems stopping me from installing 75% of the apps I want on my tablet which I just updated to it's official JellyBean ROM. No one else has reported this problem with this tablet/ROM so I hope someone knows the solution.
1) with around 50% of the apps (paid for and free) I get the error "Couldn't Install on the USB storage or SD card" (see screenshot)
2) a lot of apps (Chrome for example) say they are not compatible, yet they were fine in ICS and they are fine on my JellyBean phone.
Number 2 I've seen before and been able to add an android.hardware.location.gps.xml file in to system/etc/permissions and it's work, but it's not working this time.
Number 1 has me really stumped, searching the net finds the problems on all sorts of devices and there's 2 solutions, neither of which work, one is to unmount the SD card and install, then remount it - I've unmounted & removed the card, but nothing (I have 16Gb internal memory too). The other solution is to delete any files called "smdl2tmp1" of which I have none.
Now I've tried wiping the cache etc, re-installing the ROM, doing factory resets etc but nothing is helping. I have also noticed that my internal memory isn't getting wiped each time and I cannot find how to wipe it.
The tablet has CWM recovery built in but it's in chinese, but I know my way around it.
I have noticed that if I install and load up Astro file manager it lists my storage options as this (click for screenshot)
Local Storage 1 (USB) - I have nothing plugged in to the slot
Local Storage 2 tries to point to external SD card even when it's unmounted or not even in (this still appears if I have nothing plugged in on boot too)
Local Storage 3 is my internal memory
Local Storage 1 & 2 allow me to open them but there's nothing in there and I cannot add folders etc (no errors, it just doesn't do it)
Please can anyone offer advice?
My tablet is pretty useless with hardly any apps installed on it.
can anyone help?
What tablet you running
Sent from my HTC Vision using xda app-developers app
Hi All
OK, I think this is something quite simple and its just my understanding thats awry...
Last night I factory reset m Samsung Galaxy S3 GT i9300 and installed a Cyanogenmod version of ROM 4.4.4 - very impressed so far. I am still trying to get various data recovered from different backups - but nearly there.
However my question is that when I browse to the internal storage in Windows (via USB) it shows 3.10Gb free of 11.3Gb... which implies that there is about 8.2Gb being used by something. However when I browse to ths individual folders and check properties it only shows 8.99Mb in use in 155 files. So there is 8Gb being used which I cant see in Windows. As I have wiped the phone and deleted all my apps to start again - this seems a bit high and I want to see if there is some space to reclaim somewhere.
Can anyone point me where to start with this? I am guessing that its something to do with M$ not seeing Linux, etc partitions - but any help appreciated.
Thanks
I should add that the way I installed the ROM was to boot into cwmod and do a facory reset/wipe all data - then installed the ROM from SD card followed by installing GAPPs!
I have just looked under Settings>Storage on the handset and it shows;
Total Space - 11.35Gb
Available - 3.20Gb
Apps - 533Mb
Pictures Videos - 148kb
Audio - 240kb
Downloads - 12.00kb
Cached Data - 8.63Mb
Misc - 20kb
So as you can see there is a whole chunk of usable space hidden
I am using an app called Automatic Call Recorder - which initially appeared under Apps saying it was using 5Gb of space... as the data for this is all on the external SD Card I clicked the "clear cache" option and it dropped to 15.69Mb afterwards.
I have just tried booting into CWMod and cleared cache files in case that helped - it didint
So I guess that for some reason this space is assigned to ACR and I cant get it back - any ideas?
OK - no help, so decided to format the internal SD Card using CWM and start again - once formatted it released 10Gb+ of space
So although I had to start again installing apps and restoring data it now shows 10.3Gb free with everything installed.
Hope this might help someone else!!!
I own a Nokia 6, never rooted, 8.1.0 with the latest security patch installed (1 August 2018).
I have 32 GB internal shared storage and 64 GB microSD card installed. Be it a good or bad idea, I have formatted the card as internal storage, and migrated data to it using options available in Android settings, no third party shenanigans.
When I look at apps' details, those that have the option to choose storage signify that they are on sdcard.
Now, to the problem: I approached about half of used space on the sdcard, that's a bit over 32 GB, and I'm closing in on about half on the internal shared storage, that's about 13.4 GB used at the moment.
However, even though it would look like I have lots of unused space left, the phone started to act as if I don't have any. But... Not always. Let me elaborate.
I can't make a picture or record video, all I get is: "there was a problem with saving your photo or video."
I can't download files using a browser. It instantly fails.
I can't install apps from Google Play Store like "Google" and many others, however, I can install some other apps, seemingly at random (but if it fails, of keeps failing).
I can - because I just did - download security patches from settings/system updates....
From the above I speculate without any specific Android knowledge that:
- the internal shared storage isn't a single partition spanning the whole of built-in memory but rather is partitioned into multiple... Well, parts, therefore:
- there's probably a /system, /data and /user partition (forgive the layman guesswork on the names). There's probably also a /swap like in *nix? Then again, I guess not because that would probably slowly kill internal storage flash memory...
Anyway, from the above I gather that the simplistic reporting on how much internal storage I used doesn't let me know that I might have ran out of space on one of those discrete partitions.
That might explain why some apps I can install (they can be installed in external storage, so they do) and some I can't (they need to be on internal storage for whatever reason).
I have tried looking at the app info to maybe move apps to SD card but any and all I check either don't have the option or they already are on SD.
I tried deleting files and removing apps with various results:
- some files I just can't remove, even though they don't appear to be in use (still, maybe they have handles open, I don't know how to check for that apart of forcing suspected apps close)
- some apps (HERE Maps) left a considerable amount of junk in Android/data after themselves, and none of my file managers seem to be able to delete these files.
- some files and apps deleted just fine and the used space indicator did reflect that, however...
I still can't save a photo or video, or download a file, and apps still either install or not, just like before.
That got me thinking that there may be a problem with file/directory permissions for some bizarre reason.
I'm stumped. I'm on the go, visiting Milan tomorrow and I won't be able to take a single photo. Not that Nokia 6 has a great camera, but it's there and I can't use it when I need it.
Halp?
A little bump
So, am I truly sentenced to factory reset?
Hidden Android dialer codes don't work at all... I think I'm out of options here.
Update: So I did end up doing the factory reset. Afterward, my phone started to work fine, with the exception of the microSD card that always showed up in the notification area as needing of attention. I tried formatting it as portable, and it would supposedly work if you went by the final "success" message, but it wouldn't change anything, and it would still not show up in file manager. The notification about it needing to be set up would still be there, no matter how many times I tried.
So I took the card out and connected it to a PC - tried formatting it, deleting and recreating all partitions, wiping it out, all supposedly would work in partition managers, but after the things were all done, it wouldn't reflect on the actual card.
Seems like it was dying already.... Fortunately, I had a 32GB card to spare, got it into the phone. Worked on the first try.
So that's all folks, my 64GB microSD card died on me, and that's the reason of all the anguish above. Now you know.