Storage Space Running Out Warning - Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I am getting this message and it takes me to my storage via Settings. The main culprits appear to be Apps (consuming 3.57 GB) and Miscellaneous ( consuming 9.16 GB). Have not encountered this before so wondering what is recommended to do next to resolve this (besides just deleting apps). I have a SD card a LOT of unused space (about 60 GB).

The user usable storage space of the internal memory is 9 GB on the S4 16 GB version.
So I assume you have a 32 GB version?
Otherwise what you're saying - about miscellaneous using 9 GB and data 3 GB - doesn't make sense.
My idea would be to wipe the internal storage.

The device memory shows 16 GB. I installed a card which is what I was referring to with the additional storage. How do you wipe the internal storage and won't that negatively impact other things?

wedmiston said:
The device memory shows 16 GB. I installed a card which is what I was referring to with the additional storage. How do you wipe the internal storage and won't that negatively impact other things?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How you wipe it depends on the recovery you're using.
Some apps store data on the internal memory, so that will get wiped, and everything on the internal memory with it.
ROM and user installed apps are stored on a different partition, so they should be safe.

So based on what you said, I'm not feeling comfortable the wiping the internal memory is such a good idea. Is there a more strategic, selective way to go about this rather than a broad-brush wipe and risk losing stuff or functions?
GDReaper said:
How you wipe it depends on the recovery you're using.
Some apps store data on the internal memory, so that will get wiped, and everything on the internal memory with it.
ROM and user installed apps are stored on a different partition, so they should be safe.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I just offered you an easy way.
The alternative is to go through each folder, see what it contains and delete unnecessary stuff.

You could always try SDMaid available on the play store
Edit....you *are* rooted right?
http://i.imgur.com/rVnFwJM.jpg

Related

[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] What's a good utility to determine storage capacities.

For example, I've got A2SD installed and I want to know how much I've got available in my sd-ext partition, but none of the stock storage utilities tells me how much storage I have in my partitions. Only internal and sd card.
I'm currently running NexusHD2-ICS-4.0.4-CM9-HWA V2.0 (Kernel: tytung_HWA_r2) with 40ad2sdx.
When I'm looking at my apps via ROM Tooldbox Pro, It shows I have less then a MB left in System, but my internal storage is well over 700mb.
I had to do some digging around in File Expert to find out where my downlaoded apps where going. They wound up in /data/apps on phone internal storage, which means the script didn't install right, or it's spoofing internal storage so good, it's fooling file expert.
Mooncalled said:
For example, I've got A2SD installed and I want to know how much I've got available in my sd-ext partition, but none of the stock storage utilities tells me how much storage I have in my partitions. Only internal and sd card.
I'm currently running NexusHD2-ICS-4.0.4-CM9-HWA V2.0 (Kernel: tytung_HWA_r2) with 40ad2sdx.
When I'm looking at my apps via ROM Tooldbox Pro, It shows I have less then a MB left in System, but my internal storage is well over 700mb.
I had to do some digging around in File Expert to find out where my downlaoded apps where going. They wound up in /data/apps on phone internal storage, which means the script didn't install right, or it's spoofing internal storage so good, it's fooling file expert.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Less than a mb left in system is normal I think. The system partition is filled up by the ROM apps (hence when you flash a ROM you flash a system partition)
Try titanium backup. Internal memory is displayed as a2sd. The actual a2sd partition is displayed as internal.
Sent from my HTC HD2 using xda app-developers app
FreeSpace

[Q] Help! Ran out of space for updates

My device is a 9506. Some updates today failed because it said I am out of space on the device's internal 16gb drive. I am on 5.0.1. and not rooted. As of now, system memory is 4.20gb, used space is 4.05gb, cached data is 3.41gb, misc. files is 3.29gb and available space is 1.05gb. How do I regain space? Delete apps? Clear or remove some things (which)? Move some apps to the external SD? I am kind of at a standstill now.
corvus.corax said:
My device is a 9506. Some updates today failed because it said I am out of space on the device's internal 16gb drive. I am on 5.0.1. and not rooted. As of now, system memory is 4.20gb, used space is 4.05gb, cached data is 3.41gb, misc. files is 3.29gb and available space is 1.05gb. How do I regain space? Delete apps? Clear or remove some things (which)? Move some apps to the external SD? I am kind of at a standstill now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Moving photos, videos and music to the external SD is enough sometimes.
I had moved all that stuff already. In the end, I removed a couple of apps I don't use and used SD Maid Pro to clean up a bunch of app caches and it cleared almost 3 gigabytes. So all is well now. Is there a way to change to PIT file like I could on my old S2? That was a very good solution.
corvus.corax said:
I had moved all that stuff already. In the end, I removed a couple of apps I don't use and used SD Maid Pro to clean up a bunch of app caches and it cleared almost 3 gigabytes. So all is well now. Is there a way to change to PIT file like I could on my old S2? That was a very good solution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no idea

Storage still full after clean install

I upgraded to the latest pure nexus rom last night and decided it's best to do a clean install. So I wiped everything but internal memory. Which only holds twrp backup (10gb) and ti backup (1.3gb) but after install out still shows I'm using almost 40gb on storage. Is there some sort of hidden folder that I'm not seeing that is holding a ton of stuff. I can only account for about less than 30gb being used. 10gb for OS, 10gb backup, and less than 5gb for ti backups and rom zips.
If you didn't wipe your /internal storage it would be logic everything is kept original.
Do a wipe of /internal storage and your storage space will lower.
therock3181 said:
If you didn't wipe your /internal storage it would be logic everything is kept original.
Do a wipe of /internal storage and your storage space will lower.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right but even looking thru all my folders I don't see where it's adding up to 39gb being used. Only thing I have on it is twrp backup and ti backup and rom zips
r1nstang said:
Right but even looking thru all my folders I don't see where it's adding up to 39gb being used. Only thing I have on it is twrp backup and ti backup and rom zips
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you download music from play music ?
therock3181 said:
Did you download music from play music ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's all cached never downloaded And I wipe cache anytime i flash a rom
r1nstang said:
It's all cached never downloaded And I wipe cache anytime i flash a rom
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Then like I said. Do a internal storage format but do a backup of your TWRP and TI folder on your computer before.
Just a head ups. I always do an advanced format and check everything before doing a clean install. I don't restore/keep my backups. I am the type of guy that starts from scratch to limit the problems.
Any solution to your lost storage space issue? I've noticed that after copying my internal storage to my computer and then wiping internal storage in twrp it still show over 5.5gig storage used and I ain't talking about system use. When I plug my phone into my pc it shows 5.5gig used internal storage but when selecting all files and show properties only totals to less the 5meg. Now that's after performing an internal storage wipe in twrp.
I had experienced the same kind of issue on my tablet external storage. Sd was showing 8gig of 16gig used and when I plug that sd into my pc it would show the same. But after doing the select all files/properties it would show a total of less then 3gig. I moved all files to my pc, now showing over 5gig used but the SD is empty(no hidden files). Format my SD, now showing completely emplty, move my files back to SD, plug into tablet. Now showing less the 3gig used .
Obviously some lost/invisible data hiding somewhere that a quick format could fix but with the 6P you can't perform a true format. Twrp wipe does not format, just wipes.
StatikBlue said:
Any solution to your lost storage space issue? I've noticed that after copying my internal storage to my computer and then wiping internal storage in twrp it still show over 5.5gig storage used and I ain't talking about system use. When I plug my phone into my pc it shows 5.5gig used internal storage but when selecting all files and show properties only totals to less the 5meg. Now that's after performing an internal storage wipe in twrp.
I had experienced the same kind of issue on my tablet external storage. Sd was showing 8gig of 16gig used and when I plug that sd into my pc it would show the same. But after doing the select all files/properties it would show a total of less then 3gig. I moved all files to my pc, now showing over 5gig used but the SD is empty(no hidden files). Format my SD, now showing completely emplty, move my files back to SD, plug into tablet. Now showing less the 3gig used .
Obviously some lost/invisible data hiding somewhere that a quick format could fix but with the 6P you can't perform a true format. Twrp wipe does not format, just wipes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Um, are you considering that you lose space for the os?
Also that 16gb card is right, you're not gonna get a full 16gb of storage. Most 16's end up being about 14gb after a format
Yes as mentioned in my post multiple time I am not talking about system storage use (OS). Especially when I refer to an external memory experiencing the same issue (completely wipe SD in twrp, plug same SD into PC, showing 5.5 gig still used on empty card, format SD, now showing completely empty on both PC and Android).
Not sure why, but somehow storage space gets lost, hard to explain. One would need to take the time to accurately compare what one has saved on internal storage and the amount Android says is used.

6.0.1 Storage Calculator Error?

Hey all, I have a strange issue, tried all the obvious solutions, cleared caches, data, haven't wiped dalvik yet but eh. Got a storage space almost full error the other day so I linked some unlinked apps to the SD card, cleared cached data, moved images and downloads to folders in SD card and deleted what I didn't need and voila, problem solved, I cleared like 3 GB. I even tapped "Other", clicked "Explore", sorted that by size and delete files from the biggest folder (RAR files in downloads).
Idk if the image uploaded but here's a breakdown of my internal storage as it is right now:
-5.83 GB Used of 9.47 GB
-Apps 5.79 GB
-Images 30.71 MB
-Videos 20.00 KB
-Audio 224 KB
-Other 548 MB
-Cached Data 68.16 MB
NOW if you add all that up you get roughly 6.45 GB, which leaves like 616 MB just floating around. When i went into other and saw those RAR files, they totaled up to like 500-something MB and when I deleted it I noticed it fell off of the "Total Used" counter, but remained in "Other" counter.
Is there a way to reset the "Other" counter? The space is there I THINK, just seeing it there is kinda annoying. Wat Do?
By formatting the internal storage maybe.
You won't lose apps, as those are kept on a different partition.
The only things you will lose are the files on the internal storage and maybe some app settings (for apps that store data there).
TWRP also stores its settings there, so next time it boots it will be like you just flashed the recovery.
GDReaper said:
By formatting the internal storage maybe.
You won't lose apps, as those are kept on a different partition.
The only things you will lose are the files on the internal storage and maybe some app settings (for apps that store data there).
TWRP also stores its settings there, so next time it boots it will be like you just flashed the recovery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
will try that now, will I have issues with link2sd or have to reflash xposed, gapps or cm?
noozman7190 said:
will try that now, will I have issues with link2sd or have to reflash xposed, gapps or cm?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nevermind, stupid question I'm tired, seems like a lot of trouble for something that is so strange and isn't really doing anything bad
noozman7190 said:
nevermind, stupid question I'm tired, seems like a lot of trouble for something that is so strange and isn't really doing anything bad
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've never used link2sd.
But for the rest it's a big fat no.
Formatting the internal storage is exactly the same as formatting the microSD card.
I do recommend formatting it once in a while.
I usually do it at every ROM update.
GDReaper said:
I've never used link2sd.
But for the rest it's a big fat no.
Formatting the internal storage is exactly the same as formatting the microSD card.
I do recommend formatting it once in a while.
I usually do it at every ROM update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll do it tonight at work, I just cleared data from the unrar app I used for the rar files I had and that freed up about 100mb from the "Other" counter, didn't do anything for the total storage though
@GDReaper Wiping internal storage worked for me, even freed up more space than just the "Other". gr8 m8, I r8 8/8 Thank you!!!

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