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] Available space in 32 GB ATT version

Posted in wrong sub forum earlier,
Does anybody know what will be the available space in Note 3, unrooted ATT version. Also, what after rooting and removing some ATT/Sammy bloatwares..
Thanks

ananta said:
Posted in wrong sub forum earlier,
Does anybody know what will be the available space in Note 3, unrooted ATT version. Also, what after rooting and removing some ATT/Sammy bloatwares..
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've seen screenshots of around 25GB available on the internal sdcard on stock ROM. Rooting and removing bloatware doesn't open a single byte of space for the user to use as they see fit. Bloat is stored in system partition and all user information is in the data partition. You can remove every single app that Samsung and your carrier puts on the phone and you won't free up any space at all. The sdcard has to be partitioned so that just enough space for the ROM is in system and the rest gets allocated for data. Most developers do not want to touch partitioning (one false move and phone is hard bricked), so the space goes wasted.
I'm using Vanir ROM on my VZN SGS4 (BLAZING fast ROM, btw). Notice that nearly 2GB of free space is just sitting there waiting for more apps...

Thanks doc, I was not aware about system partition. anyway, 25 free on 32 is not bad. Asking to see if I want to buy external SD right away or wait till I get hand on.
Thanks
docnok63 said:
I've seen screenshots of around 25GB available on the internal sdcard on stock ROM. Rooting and removing bloatware doesn't open a single byte of space for the user to use as they see fit. Bloat is stored in system partition and all user information is in the data partition. You can remove every single app that Samsung and your carrier puts on the phone and you won't free up any space at all. The sdcard has to be partitioned so that just enough space for the ROM is in system and the rest gets allocated for data. Most developers do not want to touch partitioning (one false move and phone is hard bricked), so the space goes wasted.
I'm using Vanir ROM on my VZN SGS4 (BLAZING fast ROM, btw). Notice that nearly 2GB of free space is just sitting there waiting for more apps...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Resize partitions?

It's been bugging me for a while that the system partition sizes are so huge, and I only get a little over 9GB for actual storage. Specifially the cache, of which I'm only using 104/2037MB, and the system, of which I'm only using 485/2717MB.
Is there any way to resize these partitions to give me more room for storage? I'm looking into making a new partition on my sd card, but that still doesn't solve the stupidly huge cache/system partitions.
There is also the issue of the missing space. As far as I can tell, my phone only has 14892MB in total, not the advertised 16GB. I understand that usable space is frequently lower than advertised on storage devices, but this is a little bit too much.
I've researched this but couldn't find anything useful. Maybe my google-fu is low haha.
Thanks in advance.

Bump.

Masterjuggler said:
Bump.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been looking for a way to do this as well. I feel like I'm wasting at least a good 3gb that could be used for installing some larger games or something. As far as I can tell, there is a way to do it on another variant of the S4, involving using odin to flash a Chinese version of the stock rom(specifically the PIT file) which repartitions the storage. But it only works on that variant, and won't work for us. No way to do it on the sph-l720, at least none that I can find.
I was thinking I could reclaim some of the system partition by taking any apps that are essential to me, and converting them to system apps. But since the system partition gets wiped every time I update the rom, which is very frequently, that would be a disaster.

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,

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!!!