Database Users

Do any of the ROMS offer more free flash storage than the stock ROM?

I am in a frustrating battle trying to keep space free on my phone. I am to the point of deleting apps I really would not want to if I had the space available. So my question is, do any of the ROMS offer more app install space?
And FWIW, I have done apps2sd, cleared all the caches I can clear, and everything else people suggest to do. Thanks for any help!

Not an answer to your question but out of curiosity what apps are you using on a daily basis? I find that my "core" apps that I need plus an extra app here and there all install usually leave me with about 30MB free space. of course at this point i'm not using a lot and I don't have many games installed(just monopoly). I'm using cyanogenmod 6.1

tlogank said:
I am in a frustrating battle trying to keep space free on my phone. I am to the point of deleting apps I really would not want to if I had the space available. So my question is, do any of the ROMS offer more app install space?
And FWIW, I have done apps2sd, cleared all the caches I can clear, and everything else people suggest to do. Thanks for any help!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When you say you have done app2sd, so you mean stock Froyo or app2ext?
If you are having this issue with app2ext, then you need to make a larger ext part.
You can also move your Dalvik-Cache to /cache or /sdcard, but only if you have ext part for the /sdcard move to work.

You need to change the partition table (by flashing a custom HBOOT) to get more space on /data, and as far as I know, no-one has done it.

Use good old Apps2EXT aka Apps2SD+ aka DarkTremor's Apps2SD. Read the Wiki to find the link, or just go to Development section and look there. Partition your SD card, make 512MB or larger EXT data partition, and you're done for all the foreseeable future.
How could you avoid reading about it and read all the rest - escapes me.

givathugahug said:
Not an answer to your question but out of curiosity what apps are you using on a daily basis? I find that my "core" apps that I need plus an extra app here and there all install usually leave me with about 30MB free space. of course at this point i'm not using a lot and I don't have many games installed(just monopoly). I'm using cyanogenmod 6.1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here are the top-10 space-hogging apps I have (and some of them are partially moved to /sdcard!):
Google Maps: 10.13 MB
Rock Player: 8.80 MB
SlingPlayer Mobile: 8.64 MB
Facebook: 7.40 MB
Adobe Flash Player: 7.09 MB
Twitter: 5.08 MB
Google Voice Search: 4.44 MB
Google Voice: 3.78 MB
Skyfire: 3.34 MB
Google Goggles: 2.60 MB
That's 61.3 MB in 10 apps alone...

I have 200MB in apps alone, not counting their data or Dalvik cache (together they come up to 380MB). It's not about having "core" apps and "rare" apps, it's about having the apps that I want to use. Some of them I use often, some of them I use rarely, but I don't have apps that I never use.

I am in a Similar situation, using DarkTremors Apps2sd. I havent done cache2sd because i am using a class 2 sd card, and have been advised against it.
I set up a 512mb partition, and have moved all my apps away from apps2fat, but max free space i get is about 32mb, after clearing the cache of both my browsers.

Check the size of your Dalvik cache, and do Dalvik2cache if it's under 80MB.
I have Class2 16GB SD card and I ran out of space on /cache, so I moved Dalvik to SD and didn't notice any performance hits.

liam.lah said:
I am in a Similar situation, using DarkTremors Apps2sd. I havent done cache2sd because i am using a class 2 sd card, and have been advised against it.
I set up a 512mb partition, and have moved all my apps away from apps2fat, but max free space i get is about 32mb, after clearing the cache of both my browsers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm in the same boat...
I have about 32m free with Darktremors, which is actually less than if I move apps to SD using Titanium.
Might try moving dalkiv.
How do I check the size?
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

efrant said:
Here are the top-10 space-hogging apps I have (and some of them are partially moved to /sdcard!):
Google Maps: 10.13 MB
Rock Player: 8.80 MB
SlingPlayer Mobile: 8.64 MB
Facebook: 7.40 MB
Adobe Flash Player: 7.09 MB
Twitter: 5.08 MB
Google Voice Search: 4.44 MB
Google Voice: 3.78 MB
Skyfire: 3.34 MB
Google Goggles: 2.60 MB
That's 61.3 MB in 10 apps alone...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One way to get a bit of space back is to move the updated ROM apps to the /system/app partition, replacing the older versions and deleting the new versions out of /data/app. I've done that with Maps, Voice, Goggles, and YouTube. You should be able to do it with Twitter and Facebook as well--I don't use them and so just removed them from the ROM altogether. You can find details on doing this via a Google search, though I could post my procedure in this thread if anyone's interested.

highvista said:
though I could post my procedure in this thread if anyone's interested.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sound's cool...do post your steps & what filemanager your using.

Jack_R1 said:
Check the size of your Dalvik cache, and do Dalvik2cache if it's under 80MB.
I have Class2 16GB SD card and I ran out of space on /cache, so I moved Dalvik to SD and didn't notice any performance hits.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Be VERY careful when moving your Dalvik-Cache to /cache. It's only 90MB and not used if you are running a custom ROM. The /cache partition is only there to stage OTA's from Google. If you are running custom recovery, it won't be used.
Anyway, I would HIGHLY suggest you get yourself a Class 6 Card or better and move it to SD. It will free up a TON more space and stretch out your love of your N1.

I'm running CM, and it looks like the cache also stages apps downloaded from the market...
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

danger-rat said:
I'm running CM, and it looks like the cache also stages apps downloaded from the market...
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well that's stupid.
Oh well, guess /cache is not a very good idea after all.

Just what it looks like. I downloaded 4 apps today, and cache has 4 download.apk type files with today's date...
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

Yeah....I had space issues until I moved Dalvik to SD, freed over 80mb space. But if I remember right, I had some issues when doing this and had to wipe and do a fresh install, move dalvik and apps, then restore. Or maybe that was when I tried dalvik to cache.....which would explain why it was bad.

galaxys said:
Sound's cool...do post your steps & what filemanager your using.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been doing it with an Orange San Francisco this morning, it's easy, just use busybox to cp the .apk files from /data/app to /system/app, the ones in /data/app were automatically removed by the OS.

Yeah, why the hell do you have so much of that those apps in /data/apps when you could just put them in /system/apps which is a different storage.
I could put Facebook there too but i only install about 7-10apps on my phone. Angry Birds being the biggest but that's on the SD card (Froyo A2SD). After all my apps i probably have 170MB free in the DATA. Granted i'm not installing 60apps like some people here but i'm sure if you put Facebook and Google Maps in the system (along with twitter and all that other stuff that come included in the GAPPS zip file) then you'd have more free space. After a clean install i usually have 196MB free to start from.

Rusty! said:
I've been doing it with an Orange San Francisco this morning, it's easy, just use busybox to cp the .apk files from /data/app to /system/app, the ones in /data/app were automatically removed by the OS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you're not doing anything fancy, just copy the apk's? They are named exactly the same, etc?
I'm going to try this too.. Gonna visit the ole nandroid first though.
derp, wait, this doesn't even matter if you're using Apps2Ext right? Not going to save any space in /data in that case.
BTW, this isn't exactly pretty, but I was having some serious /data space issues since installing Dungeon Hunter.. 6.5m library in /data/data/*gameloft*/lib, so I mkdir /system/sd/gameloft and moved/symlinked the lib. Works great. I have a few other libs in /data/data that I could do, but for now this gets me back to 25M free.
Still fighting moving dalvik to SD but I imagine I'll be doing that eventually.

My /system is full, why & how to fix?

Using SystemPanel Lite, I noticed my phone only has 196KB out of 258.3MB free in /system. Yikes. I am running EC05 and rooted (one.click.root.exploitv2.5.5) but the only rooted app I've installed is wireless tether. This seems really bad to me but maybe its not as /data & /cache seem to have plenty of room. Suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.

Go to the market and download App 2 Sd Free

I think that app only affects /cache and /data - I have plenty of space free there as I move my larger apps to sd card already. /system is unaffected by moving apps to sd, and clearing cache did not change anything either.

Start deleting the bloateare that you don't want. The phone came preloaded with way to much junk. That will free up your system partition.
Sent From My Evo Killer!!!

Mine is the same way. /System is 99% full. This is pretty much stock-rooted EC05 with only a few apps installed.

Your /system will NEVER run out of room because it's a read-only section of the device (aka where the OS runs off of). No apps, data, settings, etc are ever written to it. The average user will never personally edit the system files themselves.
If you want to free up pointless space flash a ROM that has bloatware removed.

I ran into that problem while trying to update my hosts file. yoju can delete the asphalt demo program which is 5mb, and you'll have enough free space to do what you may need. Funny though, delete a 5mb program, and have a little over 4mb free. Lol
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

like arashed said, it was designed to be full... you dont really need room unless you are modifying something on it.. if so remove something else. its a system partition, apps belong on the data partition, or the sdcard..

In Terms of Bloat...regarding OS

Anybody know how the three OS versions compare (eclair, froyo, gingerbread) as far as system file size and how much of the internal storage they take? I would hope Gingerbread is the least bloated most optimized, but is the truth different?

I would imagine it increases with each revision as they add more features, although that doesn't mean it's more bloated. Freeing up space on the system partition doesn't really matter anyway. If you don't use it then it's just wasted.

Why would it not matter, isnt the 'system partition' and the internal storage synonymous?

unsivil_audio said:
Why would it not matter, isnt the 'system partition' and the internal storage synonymous?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The internal storage on the phone is divided into several partitions. Each partition is a fixed size.
In specific, the system partition (where the ROM is stored) is 240MB and the data partition (where installed apps are stored) is 185MB. Freeing up space in the system partition won't give you any extra space on the data partition.
However the CM ROMs place the Dalvik cache on the data partition, so naturally you will have less space available for apps. I don't think the Sense "Liberated" ROMs do that but I'm not positive.
If you want more app space though, just use one of the various apps2sd methods.

Yeah I tried dark tremors a2sd before, but even though it freed up an insane amount of space it wasn't worth the performance loss. I may try it again in the future though.
Sent from my Liberty using XDA Premium App

TPT For Blade ICS Compatible

Hi
I had trouble getting ICS to load on my blade until i made a TPT of my own with TPT Helper.
Thought i'd share it.
This gives you 20mb cache,220mb system & 216mb free space.
My phone is a Gen 1 upgraded to Gen2.
All versions of ICS worked with this on my phone.
Make sure you have a rom on your sd card first before flashing.
FLASH AT YOUR OWN RISK !
I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR BRICKED PHONES !
Enjoy.
http://www.mediafire.com/?4prq55ak7iqbk4p
MD5 - d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e

You wont be able to download any apps over 20mb from the market.

wbaw said:
You wont be able to download any apps over 20mb from the market.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no i works even a 2 mb cache works.
i too use a tpt with 20mb cache and i can install all apps from the market

Can't say i've had any problems with downloading apps or it would be pointless using it really.

saaransh9 said:
no i works even a 2 mb cache works.
i too use a tpt with 20mb cache and i can install all apps from the market
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2mb cache works, with cm based roms, because they redirect /cache to /data if /cache is under 20mb - maybe it still does with this, as there's a bit of overhead for the filesystem, so it's just wasting 18mb in that case. /cache is only used for market downloads & a few small log files in clockworkmod, nothing else.
If /cache doesn't get redirected to /data, sd-ext or tmpfs, then the size of /cache dictates the maximum size app or game that you can download from the market.
Maybe something like 180mb system / 2mb cache would be better, or 200mb system if we must. Standard European blades only have about 210mb system, 220mb is just for the Chinese stock roms, so rom devs need to keep it under 205mb including all addons. I'll wait & see.

wbaw said:
2mb cache works, with cm based roms, because they redirect /cache to /data if /cache is under 20mb - maybe it still does with this, as there's a bit of overhead for the filesystem, so it's just wasting 18mb in that case. /cache is only used for market downloads & a few small log files in clockworkmod, nothing else.
If /cache doesn't get redirected to /data, sd-ext or tmpfs, then the size of /cache dictates the maximum size app or game that you can download from the market.
Maybe something like 180mb system / 2mb cache would be better, or 200mb system if we must. Standard European blades only have about 210mb system, 220mb is just for the Chinese stock roms, so rom devs need to keep it under 205mb including all addons. I'll wait & see.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
anyway the largest szie game i downloaded was angry birds let me see if bigger games or apps work.

My dev knowledge is close to zero, so i can't comment on this a great deal.
All i know is that i kept getting stuck on a boot loop when i tried to install ICS, but since i made this TPT i can install any of the ICS builds which was my aim.
Because it worked for me, i thought it might help other people who are having the same problem.
If you can improve and maybe make a better TPT, i would be gratefull and would give it a try.
I welcome anything which makes my blade a better device.

strange thing is 2 mb cache is getting errors in cwm while flashing rom if we dont clear cache as /cache is full but market works well.
so i think 20 is good.

It seems to work for me anyway

[Q] Resizing /system and /cache to gain space?

Hello everyone and thank you for having me on your wonderful forum. I have learned so much in such a short time by reading everything I could whether I was intending to use it or not.
I got my 16gb Nexus on Monday and immediately prepped it for ROMs, settling on CM10.1 RC2, Prior to that I had an Optimus V running CM7. On my Optimus, after flashing CM7 for the long haul I was able to move all excess /system space back into /data using terminal emulator and the fdisk command, but I followed a guide of some sort that is long lost now.
Everything is fantastic so far except one thing, there seems to be quite a lot of space reserved in the /system and /cache partitions, and I am not sure if I am able to re-partition this space back to /data or how exactly to do this.
right now /system is reading at 395.8 / 827.8 MB used, and /cache is at 68.4 / 551.7 MB. I would like to repartition 200 MB away from /system and 300-400 MB away from /cache, and put it back into /data. This will leave me some space to integrate or convert a few apps to system apps, and enough cache space to be safe (why does it need 550 MB to begin with?) and give back another half gig of storage that I paid so much to have.
I have three issues with this, one being that I can find almost no information on this topic directly mentioning the NExus 4, and any relatable information from other devices talking about device specific toolkits to do the job.
The only thread I found on XDA about this is below, and it only gave me a vague "this is not possible"
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2248400
The second issue is I do not recall the command switches/flags that go with the fdisk command, only that I had to use some things to set file permissions or remount the partition or some such (I know, i'm a noob, forgive me).
Lastly, I am rather confused by the multiple partitions of /data and /storage/emulated all showing a partition size of 13231.8 MB. Obviously they are all the same physical space, but I am afraid to mess with the partitions and break what I assume are a ton of symlinks that trick apps into believing there is an external SD card in play. Can any of you shed some light on this for me?

I3ig Al said:
Hello everyone and thank you for having me on your wonderful forum. I have learned so much in such a short time by reading everything I could whether I was intending to use it or not.
I got my 16gb Nexus on Monday and immediately prepped it for ROMs, settling on CM10.1 RC2, Prior to that I had an Optimus V running CM7. On my Optimus, after flashing CM7 for the long haul I was able to move all excess /system space back into /data using terminal emulator and the fdisk command, but I followed a guide of some sort that is long lost now.
Everything is fantastic so far except one thing, there seems to be quite a lot of space reserved in the /system and /cache partitions, and I am not sure if I am able to re-partition this space back to /data or how exactly to do this.
right now /system is reading at 395.8 / 827.8 MB used, and /cache is at 68.4 / 551.7 MB. I would like to repartition 200 MB away from /system and 300-400 MB away from /cache, and put it back into /data. This will leave me some space to integrate or convert a few apps to system apps, and enough cache space to be safe (why does it need 550 MB to begin with?) and give back another half gig of storage that I paid so much to have.
I have three issues with this, one being that I can find almost no information on this topic directly mentioning the NExus 4, and any relatable information from other devices talking about device specific toolkits to do the job.
The only thread I found on XDA about this is below, and it only gave me a vague "this is not possible"
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2248400
The second issue is I do not recall the command switches/flags that go with the fdisk command, only that I had to use some things to set file permissions or remount the partition or some such (I know, i'm a noob, forgive me).
Lastly, I am rather confused by the multiple partitions of /data and /storage/emulated all showing a partition size of 13231.8 MB. Obviously they are all the same physical space, but I am afraid to mess with the partitions and break what I assume are a ton of symlinks that trick apps into believing there is an external SD card in play. Can any of you shed some light on this for me?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nexus4 doesn´t have a fix size for partitions, you can use the whole memory for everything... no need to re-partition anything

75markus said:
nexus4 doesn´t have a fix size for partitions, you can use the whole memory for everything... no need to re-partition anything
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure if you are misunderstanding or not reading my whole post, or if I am not understanding you or the situation I am posting about, so please don't take offense to this reply.
It appears to me that the /system partition is reserving 827 MB space for the ROM, and CM10.1 is only using 400 MB of it
It also appears that 552 MB is reserved for the /cache partition, and only 70 MB is being currently used.
This is ~900 MB of storage space that is reserved and unused. I would like to know if it is possible to reallocate ~500-600 MB of this back into the /data partition for user space.
Please explain to me how this space is part of the whole memory that can be used for anything.
After posting I have thought some more about it and decided to NOT mess with the partition sizes, mainly because I do not know what effect it would have if I were to flash another ROM in the future, which is almost a given when Key Lime Pie is released. However I would still like to understand what I have asked about in case I do want to do this in the future, and also just for the sake of expanding my knowledge.

I like this. The only "issue" is that if more space were ever to be reallocated to /system or /cache, it'd require wiping /data obviously. Small price to pay. 500MB isn't too small a chunk for 8GB users.

75markus said:
nexus4 doesn´t have a fix size for partitions, you can use the whole memory for everything... no need to re-partition anything
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually it does. System data cache and boot, plus like 30 other ones, same as any other phone with no micro SD card
Sent from my Nexus 7 @1.60 GHz on Stock 4.2.2

I3ig Al said:
I'm not sure if you are misunderstanding or not reading my whole post, or if I am not understanding you or the situation I am posting about, so please don't take offense to this reply.
It appears to me that the /system partition is reserving 827 MB space for the ROM, and CM10.1 is only using 400 MB of it
It also appears that 552 MB is reserved for the /cache partition, and only 70 MB is being currently used.
This is ~900 MB of storage space that is reserved and unused. I would like to know if it is possible to reallocate ~500-600 MB of this back into the /data partition for user space.
Please explain to me how this space is part of the whole memory that can be used for anything.
After posting I have thought some more about it and decided to NOT mess with the partition sizes, mainly because I do not know what effect it would have if I were to flash another ROM in the future, which is almost a given when Key Lime Pie is released. However I would still like to understand what I have asked about in case I do want to do this in the future, and also just for the sake of expanding my knowledge.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i think N4 uses FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) file system
noobdeagle said:
isnt this what they were saying was the reason for no SD card and use of MTP ?; basically if i recall correctly the nexus devices do not truly assign partitions instead there is a storage 'pool' that anything can use dynamically.
so i guess there is no partitions its just all 1 volume.
source: http://www.androidcentral.com/why-nexus-devices-have-no-sd-card
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

That is for the sdcard.
The other partitions such as /system still have fixed amounts of space allocated
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app