Database Users

[Q] CM9/CM7 Out of space, but computer showing 27GB available

Hello all,
I have CM9 nightly installed on a 32GB microSD and I have just run into a weird problem. I still have 27GB left open BUT when I try to download magazines and install apps, it's saying I'm out of room or running out of room. Anyone have any idea why that might be?
Is it possible it's installing things to the EMMC? If so, how do I change that?
Sorry if this a n00b question. Thanks in advance for your help.

mikelav456 said:
Hello all,
I have CM9 nightly installed on a 32GB microSD and I have just run into a weird problem. I still have 27GB left open BUT when I try to download magazines and install apps, it's saying I'm out of room or running out of room. Anyone have any idea why that might be?
Is it possible it's installing things to the EMMC? If so, how do I change that?
Sorry if this a n00b question. Thanks in advance for your help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android has 3 major areas where stuff is stored. The system partition holds all the OS stuff plus has an area for system apps. The data partition is were downloaded apps get stored normally. The media or sdcard area is normally used for music, videos, pictures and also where some apps store any working data.
The system and data areas are of relatively fixed sizes even though they are all on the actual SD card. For your 32GB SD card it is probably "460M system, 975M data, rest is FAT for sdcard" from veryGreen post.
So your error message is being triggered probably because the 975M data partition is full. Typically this enough to hold about 150 - 200 apps depending on their size, but some games can take quite a lot.
You can check memory usage by going into settings and looking under apps.
What can you do about it? On an SD card install the simplest way is to use ANdroids capability to move apps from the standard data partition to the sdcard partition. Not all apps can be moved but many can and this will then free up space in your data partition.
Get the Apps2Sd app to help you manage this process.

I haven't run from a sdcard in quitevawhile, buy it sounds like the card didn't get repartitioned after making it into a bootable. After you burn an image to a card, you need to use an application like Easus, a disk partitioning tool (free for home use for windows, I believe) t repartition the card and make use if the remaining space.

mateorod said:
I haven't run from a sdcard in quitevawhile, buy it sounds like the card didn't get repartitioned after making it into a bootable. After you burn an image to a card, you need to use an application like Easus, a disk partitioning tool (free for home use for windows, I believe) t repartition the card and make use if the remaining space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think the partitioning must have worked otherwise it wouldn't function at all.
You could change data partition size to give more space to the data partition if you are careful. I've done that on emmc prior to install. I've never tried it on an SD card after install and it's possible it might muck something else up. However, the basic point is that apps and related content go into data by default. The big part of the SD card left over from the initial install is intended for media.
Compare it to a phone. The data partition in the internal phone memory is fixed and can run out of space if lots of apps are installed. If you plug an SD expansion card into a phone it allows you to store lots music, video, etc but unless you move apps to the SD card then your original data space is unchanged. That's why app users can complain if a memory hungry app can't be moved to SD.

Maybe you can teach me something here. I am not sure I understand.
When I formatted an 8 gig card to run cm7.1, I was able to use it to boot but had the rest of memory unavailable for use. It wasn't until I redid the process and then reformatted the partitions to have the remaining space available. Only then was I able to use the remaining 6 gigabyte or whatever. I had the four partitions in both instances, and the card worked, it just wasn't available because all the space was allocated to the wrong partition. Which I rectified with Easus, I'm pretty sure.
What I guess I am saying, isbthat there are some tools that could be used, although I maybe wrong. It just seems counter-intuitive that the OP should have to use App2SD and otherworkarounds when theybhave 32 gigs to play with. I think Easus lets you define those partitions anyway you like, with the 29 gigs or so that is left once you allocate the system stuff.
Like I sad, I maybe just don't understand this very well, it is something I did when I was first learning about rooting, before I figured there was no real reason not to go internal.

mateorod said:
Maybe you can teach me something here. I am not sure I understand.
When I formatted an 8 gig card to run cm7.1, I was able to use it to boot but had the rest of memory unavailable for use. It wasn't until I redid the process and then reformatted the partitions to have the remaining space available. Only then was I able to use the remaining 6 gigabyte or whatever. I had the four partitions in both instances, and the card worked, it just wasn't available because all the space was allocated to the wrong partition. Which I rectified with Easus, I'm pretty sure.
What I guess I am saying, isbthat there are some tools that could be used, although I maybe wrong. It just seems counter-intuitive that the OP should have to use App2SD and otherworkarounds when theybhave 32 gigs to play with. I think Easus lets you define those partitions anyway you like, with the 29 gigs or so that is left once you allocate the system stuff.
Like I sad, I maybe just don't understand this very well, it is something I did when I was first learning about rooting, before I figured there was no real reason not to go internal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The various partitions have different purposes. It's not that they are unavailable for use. You want each area to have sufficient room for what you want but not necessarily too big because that then is wasted and is subtracting from the other areas.
First there is the boot partition containing the boot images. This can be small.
Next you have the system partition (~500MB) which can be fairly small because the OS does not take a lot of room and the system apps are relatively fixed in size and you don't need to add extra to that.
Next you have the data partition where downloaded apps and some of their associated data lives. You want this to be fairly big to accommodate a decent number of apps but it doesn't need to be huge. Apps vary in size from 100s of Kbytes up to say 20MB or more. So a 1GB data partition can typically hold about 200 apps.
On an SD card that then leaves the rest of space for a sdcard partition where media can be stored like video, pictures and music plus some apps will also require some working space on there.
So on an SD card install the main balance is between data and sdcard. If you were to make the data partition larger to accommodate more downloaded apps then you reduce the amount of space for music, video etc. But you do want enough space to hold a decent number of apps. The standard verygreen SD card installer sets the balance at ~1GB data and the rest sdcard for media. Now if you never wanted to put much media files on the SD card and you want to be able to download thousands of apps then that would be an argument for setting the balance the other way.
Now if you install to the internal memory the same scenario applies but you have an additional partition confusingly called emmc. Your boot, system and data areas are on the internal memory. The left over internal area is the emmc partition and the sd card is now normally set up to be a single sdcard partition.
Both the emmc and the sd card are typically used to hold media files.
The size of the data and emmc partition in the internal memory can be varied before you do the install by some partitoning zip tools and there is a thread dedicated to that.
By default as supplied new Nooks have a 5GB internal data partition and a 1GB emmc. Many people think that is not a great choice as it is really difficult to run out of app space with 5GB and it means there is only 1GB internal space for media and the unused data space is wasted. By repartitoning to say 2GB data and 4GB emmc then you get plenty of space for apps and release space for more media.
You are right that using something like Apps2Sd would seem unnecessary when you have lots of free space. It is effectively a work-around to let you use some of the sdcard as extra data area if you run out of the data area that has been allocated. Actually on an SD card install there is not much of a downside in that moving an app from data to sdcard as it is still all on the same SD card. For an internal memory install it is nice to have a big enough data partiton to make moving apps to the SD card unnecessary.

[Q] This device is running low on free disk space - whats going on?

Hi,
I'm using SUNDAWG LEGENDARY TBD EDITION "STOCK" ROM.
From 2 days im getting notification "This device is running low on free disk space(...)" when opening some apps.
I don't know whats going on. Last time i had this i reinstall this ROM, because that was impossible to open any app, even dialer.
I have 102MB free on my memory.
12GB free on SD card.
1.2GB free on Internal Storage.
so...
whats going on?
How to fix this?
I need to have my phone usesfull, I'm far from home, i cant reinstall ROM now, and using phone as navigation Whithout the phone I will have a lots of problems to come back to home :laugh: (not funny!) :laugh:
Whatvere, please help me =^-^=

Android has a restriction within it which limits further downloads and (any writes to memory) when the remaining space gets below 10% of that which is available.
I agree, this can be very frustrating. Especially for NativeSD users with a 32Gb card, a 10Gb Ext4 partition and a few NativeSD roms installed. When the ext4 partition gets 90% full, no roms can be used. Despite there being a whole 1Gb of space remaining.
There is a possible solution here which I haven't had a chance to try out yet, involving reducing the 10% restriction to 5 or 2% for example. But this would only be a temporary solution for your case, until you fill up the new available limit.
In your present situation (away from home), I would try to delete any unwanted apps.
A more permanent solution could be to do a nandroid backup, then trying to increase the ext4 partition via recovery.
Hope this helps, and I hope I haven't misunderstood your problem.

Hi, I have same problem with low disk space either I have lots of mb free ram. Now I use clean master and it really work. It is able to clean ram without reboot and low disk message is gone. Second thing is to move all apps into SD card.
Sent from my NexusHD2 using xda app-developers app

smoula.dd said:
Hi, I have same problem with low disk space either I have lots of mb free ram. Now I use clean master and it really work. It is able to clean ram without reboot and low disk message is gone. Second thing is to move all apps into SD card.
Sent from my NexusHD2 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It removes notification because when you use clean master it cleans your cache, which is also if i'm not wrong part of "data" partition. So, it frees you some amount of your data storage and msg is gone until you refill it with using apps.

Free up more space after installing Cyanogenmod?

When I initially got my ATT Galaxy S4 32GB, it only had 24GB usable presumably all of the Samsung software using up 8GB. So I rooted and installed Cyanogenmod. My phone still only says that 24GB is usable. Shouldn't some of this memory been freed up when I got rid of Touchwiz? I wiped data and cache as instructed in the instructions. What gives?

No. The partition sizes don't change so you won't see a greater amount of memory.

Please see this thread. It's not directly addressing the same device, but it should answer your questions. Last I checked, they're working on a very unsafe alternative to messing with the PIT partition, and they're going the route of manually re-partitioning the device through a custom recovery (obviously very dangerous).

Normal Space utilization on stock S5?

Ok, so for once I have a stock, unrooted phone, AT&T S5. Ever since the last firmware upgrade I've been getting a lot of storage issues, so I started looking at things and none of it makes sense to me. I use an sdcard for just about everything, but this is how the storage breaks down at the moment on the internal storage :
16gb total
11.5 gb in 'internal storage' - meaning, as I understand, 4.5gb of OS partitions
This is where things get squirrely
1.28 gb of used user files
1.5gb free
0 gb cache (i just emptied it.)
So, about 8+gb are in unnamed 'system, but not os' files. Wtf??
The way I read this it I have 3gb of usable space - shared with cache (that within days goes to 1.5gb+) on a 16gb phone. Meanwhile, I went through and moved just about anything of size to sdcard. I have a fair number of apps, but not an extreme amount and nothing that unusual.
So, is this normal? And is there a way to figure out what is stealing that 8+gb of space without root and maybe remove it??
Part of me suspects it is some non-cache temp files - esp firmware updates (there have been a few, and they are large, and things seem to get worse after each firmware push.
Thanks,

Finding available internal memory

Hi all, just seeing if anyone can tell me why the storage screen says I only have 1.5gb of free memory when DiskUsage says I should have a lot more?
I have rooted my phone and using Xpower rom.
Pics attached. Thanks everyone.

Curiously, I ran into the same problem yesterday after a session of flashing new firmware and restoring backup of my phone. It had never occurred before.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/z5-compact/help/z5c-reporting-incorrect-storage-size-t3564059
Someone in this thread said the problem went away after a few reboots. I've rebooted about 3 times now, still shows 16GB available instead of 32GB.
I'll probably do some more flashing/restoring later on to see if that fixes anything.

You're showing pictures of different mounting points.
/internal shown in second picture is it's own virtual partition
/system shown in last picture is also it's own partition and has its own free space
The free space shown in android storage will only display the free space on the virtual data/internal storage so it looks perfectly fine to me.
Also external sdcard won't add to virtual internal data storage.

pitrus- said:
You're showing pictures of different mounting points.
/internal shown in second picture is it's own virtual partition
/system shown in last picture is also it's own partition and has its own free space
The free space shown in android storage will only display the free space on the virtual data/internal storage so it looks perfectly fine to me.
Also external sdcard won't add to virtual internal data storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh ok. Thanks for the reply. My total internal storage is meant to be 16gb. This is why I thought the two screenshots formed (most of) this 16gb.
So based on your information, where has the rest of my internal memory gone? The first DiskUsage screenshot says I have 8.24gb in total storage. Is the rest not usable because it's a private system partition?
Also I've attached another screenshot. Is it normal for the internal system to use up 7.76gb?

About 8GB for a Sony Android system ROM sounds about right, lots of bloatware and included apps. On a 16GB Sony phone, half is available for photos, music and apps/apps data.
That's why you should never buy a phone with only 16GB in 2016/2017. My Oneplus 3t with 128GB is a hair saver. ?

pitrus- said:
You're showing pictures of different mounting points.
/internal shown in second picture is it's own virtual partition
/system shown in last picture is also it's own partition and has its own free space
The free space shown in android storage will only display the free space on the virtual data/internal storage so it looks perfectly fine to me.
Also external sdcard won't add to virtual internal data storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
pitrus- said:
About 8GB for a Sony Android system ROM sounds about right, lots of bloatware and included apps. On a 16GB Sony phone, half is available for photos, music and apps/apps data.
That's why you should never buy a phone with only 16GB in 2016/2017. My Oneplus 3t with 128GB is a hair saver.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ack. Ok, I'll try remove bloatware then (although I thought Xpower did already).
Yeah I broke my beloved z1c camera and thought z5c would be a nice replacement... Really wanted a small phone.

kickling said:
Ack. Ok, I'll try remove bloatware then (although I thought Xpower did already).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uninstalling uninstallable bloatware will reclaim a few MB of space, but removing preloaded system bloatware won't help much in freeing up usable space. The system partition is a fixed size, generally inaccessible, and any unused space in there isn't counted towards total available free space.
BTW, I thought you were asking about the 16GB total space in the first snapshot in your original post. The Z5C has 32GB internal storage space, not 16GB. Just thought you should know.

mhaha said:
Uninstalling uninstallable bloatware will reclaim a few MB of space, but removing preloaded system bloatware won't help much in freeing up usable space. The system partition is a fixed size, generally inaccessible, and any unused space in there isn't counted towards total available free space.
BTW, I thought you were asking about the 16GB total space in the first snapshot in your original post. The Z5C has 32GB internal storage space, not 16GB. Just thought you should know.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
.... Say what?! I'm supposed to have 32gb? Why does my storage screen say I've only got 16gb? 16gb hidden system?

kickling said:
.... Say what?! I'm supposed to have 32gb? Why does my storage screen say I've only got 16gb? 16gb hidden system?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, that's what I was trying to say in my original reply up there. I assumed you were confused about the anomaly in total internal storage, something that I recently experienced and was also reported by some other folks.
I've found a supposed solution after a bit of Googling, but I'm not sure if it's the right answer. I plan to test it out later on.
But yes, you're supposed to have 32GB total internal storage, inclusive of all partitions hidden or otherwise. After deducting the OS and stuff, there should be 21~22GB of usable free space left.

mhaha said:
Well, that's what I was trying to say in my original reply up there. I assumed you were confused about the anomaly in total internal storage, something that I recently experienced and was also reported by some other folks.
I've found a supposed solution after a bit of Googling, but I'm not sure if it's the right answer. I plan to test it out later on.
But yes, you're supposed to have 32GB total internal storage, inclusive of all partitions hidden or otherwise. After deducting the OS and stuff, there should be 21~22GB of usable free space left.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well then. I feel dumb!
Coming from the z1c I guess I've gotten used to having 16gb internal memory.

mhaha said:
Well, that's what I was trying to say in my original reply up there. I assumed you were confused about the anomaly in total internal storage, something that I recently experienced and was also reported by some other folks.
I've found a supposed solution after a bit of Googling, but I'm not sure if it's the right answer. I plan to test it out later on.
But yes, you're supposed to have 32GB total internal storage, inclusive of all partitions hidden or otherwise. After deducting the OS and stuff, there should be 21~22GB of usable free space left.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
..... I'm reading that you either need to reflash firmware, or if you're lucky repair the system partition in Twrp.
TBA...

kickling said:
..... I'm reading that you either need to reflash firmware, or if you're lucky repair the system partition in Twrp.
TBA...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I can confirm a complete fresh flash of stock firmware restores the total space to 32GB. I didn't touch the system partition, so I'm not sure whether a repair of system in TWRP would do anything, and there's no means for me to test it now.
Hopefully, a restore of my nandroid backup will preserve the correct total storage space.
EDIT: Yup, restore successful and total space is 32GB. FWIW, the "solution" I mentioned earlier was a discussion for a Nexus device, and it said it's necessary to restore stock recovery first. Not sure the exact cause of problem or actual solution to fiz the problem, but anyway reflash worked for me.

mhaha said:
Yes, I can confirm a complete fresh flash of stock firmware restores the total space to 32GB. I didn't touch the system partition, so I'm not sure whether a repair of system in TWRP would do anything, and there's no means for me to test it now.
Hopefully, a restore of my nandroid backup will preserve the correct total storage space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Twrp system repair did not fix it.
Time to flash....

If you have twrp in boot, this problem happens.
The device ends up making the system read only, and then gives you the left over /data
Then when a function calls ro.hardware, its inaccessible.
You won't be able to fix it if you don't have TWRP in the recovery partition. When you do a restore, you'll get put in to a boot loop, if anything other than the data partition is selected
https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=3564059