How did phone balloon to 42GB system data? - LG V20 Questions & Answers

I got the LG V20 (Model H910) with 64GB last November and was pretty happy with it overall, especially the price and that it had a replaceable battery. With all my apps installed, I still had over 27GB free space, more than enough to hold me a long time, plus a 128GB sd card. I had quickly discovered the "Marketing Services Manager" app that was randomly adding unwanted apps to the phone and deleted that within the first week.
But then about 4 months later the free space started shrinking, until the last few months when it was down to less than 1GB free space and the phone was extremely slow. I moved all apps possible to the sd card, that got me back to almost 5GB free space. But that free space was quickly disappearing as well until I said screw it and ordered a new phone. I deleted most all apps off the V20 except for a few I wanted to see the setups and would just reset the phone afterwards and see what would happen.
Before I reset the phone took a screenshot of the Disk Usage app showing the 42GB in system data, and one after I set the phone back up again, with all original apps back showing the 470MB in system data. I half expected the internal storage to be corrupt and unusable, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Any idea what caused this? I had no rogue apps installed, nothing suspicious looking at all, everything possible was always stored on the sd card except for apps, cache was cleared, phone was not rooted. Is this some weird Android or LG bug? I had the LG G5 before the V20 and it was a great phone and never had this issue. And after 4 years use, the G5 system data is only 3.58GB, more along what I would expect. I use my phones for at least 3 years, but a few things bugged me about the V20 so I was ready to just cut my losses and dump it. But I'm really curious if this can happen again randomly.

Related

[Q] AT&T Update burned 8 GB of RAM

Hi Folks,
I've had the strangest thing happen to my nearly new Galaxy S4, and I'm hoping that some of you can tell me what happened and what to do about it.
Recently, I started getting a notification that AT&T wanted to do an update to my phone. I rejected the update for several days, although of course it kept coming back, but it was finally performed one night when I accidentally left my WiFi turned on overnight. I got up the next morning and found a notification that the update had been performed (note that I had never explicitly authorized it). I did notice that several new applications had been loaded on my phone... nothing major from what I can see, but the icons had shifted around a little bit in the application section of the interface... but the really big problem is that 8 GB of system RAM have now disappeared. I'm not talking about memory on the SD card, which I also have in the phone. The system now reports that 8 GB of system RAM have been expended since the AT&T update. I went from around 2.5 GB of expended memory to around 10.5 GB of expended memory in one night.
I had purchased the 32 MB version of the phone, and so I'm not hurting for memory at the moment. But I'm extremely concerned about the sudden (literally overnight) loss of 8 GB of system RAM. Could this happen again with the next update? Is there any way to get that memory back?
I went to the AT&T store where I had purchased the phone, and even their maximum tech guy had never heard of this happening. He had no solutions. So I called AT&T Tech Support and was told, at least by Tier 1 support, that I need to do a hard master reset on my phone. I find this an inadequate solution for several reasons, not the least of which is that it offers no explanation for what happened or if it could happen again. Am I going to have to master reset my phone every time AT&T decides, without my authorization, to update it? Are updates even retained between such resets?
Is there anyone here who can offer any comments on this situation? Is there anyone who has experienced anything like this with their Android phone? Is there any way to get that 8GB of RAM back? I sure would appreciate any intelligent comments on this matter...
Thanks, and best to all....
Chas
Oh let me get this straight because you confused a lot of things apparently ... you have a 32gb version of the phone and the update filled an additional 8gb of storage ... btw internal storage is not ram they are different things so you know ... i find it odd an update whatever bloatware may it had included took so much of your storage ... so it either must be some sort of bugged indicator of your internal storage or something actually got downloaded that consumed your storage ... so check your files and the applications installed to see if any of those uses that space and if not try a factory reset see if it helps ... also i don't think that any future update would cause this thing again if it is fixed ... and also when you have an update available for your phone it's best not to ignore it but actually do it
AvelonTs said:
Oh let me get this straight because you confused a lot of things apparently ... you have a 32gb version of the phone and the update filled an additional 8gb of storage ... btw internal storage is not ram they are different things so you know ... i find it odd an update whatever bloatware may it had included took so much of your storage ... so it either must be some sort of bugged indicator of your internal storage or something actually got downloaded that consumed your storage ... so check your files and the applications installed to see if any of those uses that space and if not try a factory reset see if it helps ... also i don't think that any future update would cause this thing again if it is fixed ... and also when you have an update available for your phone it's best not to ignore it but actually do it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I see that you are right about the terminology, and I apologize for the confusion. "RAM" refers to the random access workspace of the device, which on my phone is listed as 1.78 GB. What I meant to refer to is what is called "System Storage." I get to it by (a) long press on the central button, (b) choose the lower left icon, (c) choose the "Storage" tab in the resulting screen. "System Storage" under that tab is now listed as 10.43 GB/ 32.0 GB, whereas, before the update, it was 2.4 GB / 32.0 GB. This means that ~8 GB of usable system storage disappeared with the update. That's 8 GB that I can no longer use to store applications, files, etc.. Since the utility that gave me this information came with the phone (and was explicitly designed to give us information on things like active applications, RAM, and storage), it seems unlikely that it is faulty.
I find this whole situation odd as well, which is why I'm looking for a solution. I would love to find someone who has the technical expertise to help me diagnose this problem and find out what happened. I don't have that level of expertise, and apparently AT&T is not going to be much help. 8 GB is huge! It is much more storage than the entire operating system requires! I don't think that was lost by the addition of simple applications; something else happened, something significant.
I do agree that it is best to do the updates when they come in, but obviously, if this happens too many times, even a 32 GB phone would soon be depleted of system storage. It remains a problem awaiting a solution...
Thanks for your comments... Best,,,,
Are you sure that before it said 2.4GB/32GB because that's odd as well ... i have the 16gb version and i have 8.9gb available space which means i have 7.1GB/16GB out of the box and that's perfectly normal also i have an international version which mean no carrier bloatware ... so having the rom with the added bloatware from AT&T taking only 2.4GB of your internal storage is really odd ... 10.43GB/ 32.0GB seems a lot more reasonable assuming u stored some files too ...

In a world of hurt after going to adaptive storage

This sucks. I got a 16 GB model some time ago expecting marshmallow and a good microSD card to be the ticket. I have a Sandisk Ultra 128 Gb class 10 card which is well regarded for speed and reliability. I FINALLY got Marshmallow recently and went through the process of getting my card reformatted for adaptive storage. I was surprised during the process that the phone gave me a warning that the card was slow and I may experience problems, but I pressed on.
Everything seemed to work fine after the 'conversion' and the phone seemed snappy enough. Though I hadn't yet installed any new programs in the new configuration. I merely backed up photos and audio media that was being stored on the card, and then restored them to their proper location after the reformat to integrate the card with internal storage.
I then installed some apps I had removed to make space on internal storage previously. Now the phone is totally unusable. I get about 1-3 minutes of usage after boot before it hangs up on a screen, or with the notification shade pulled down. The phone just totaly freezes; I can't even power it down (need to look up how to force it to shut down).
What have I gotten myself into? Why would that card be considered 'slow and/or inadequate' when I purchased it less than 6 months ago and it is rated a good and fast card?
Any suggestions on how to proceed? I need and counted on the combined storage capability (or I never would have gone or the 16 Gb model).
Thanks for any help.
oh, and random reboots and also the screen going blank but the phone not actually being off (battery died really fast) overnight. I'm trying to get into the bootloader and do traditional things like clearing dalvik cache (is that current? I haven't done much rooting and messing around with the guts of Andriod since Kit Kat), etc.
I had to revert too. Limited TWRP support, very slow apps, couldn't connect via USB to the SD storage. I bought the 16GB thinking the same thing. Was a mistake as of now.
Besides not being able to do anything with the card in TWRP, I'm having no problems using adaptive storage, and I too use a 128GB SanDisk Ultra.
Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk
I'm not worried about TWRP. I'm actually content with the phone non-rooted if adaptive storage works, since it's not carrier locked and I can do things that previously Verizon wouldn't let me. I'm not interested in mucking around with new ROM's and stuff anymore; too busy with other tinkering projects and i have plenty of other viable devices to do that with (amazon phone and tablet, older android phones, etc.). I want this one to be a stock daily driver; but I want it to f'ing work as indicated.
I just got done doing a factory reset, formatting the SD card as internal and restoring (system tool; is that a Moto thing or Lollipop+?). We'll see how it goes. I may just have mucked it up trying to convert to adaptive storage after having used it with Lollipop AND even moving some apps to the SD card.

Apps gone from SD card after reboot on Marshmallow

I have a Moto X Pure 16GB with stock Marshmallow 6.0. I have a Samsung Pro 128GB U1 SD card installed as internal memory. If I move, or if an installed app is installed to the SD card, they disappear from the Home screen AND the app drawer on a reboot. When I reboot, the Icons are usually there just after boot up, then vanish after a minute or two. Apparently the data is not lost, because any games seem to have retained info and saves, but I have to re-install and move all the apps.
I have seen some posts that mostly do not offer any solutions, just advise me to get a bigger internal memory. Too late for that. I got this phone because I could expand the "internal" memory so much. If anyone has a workaround, please let me know. I was going to send the phone back to Motorola for service, but I don't think they even know what is going wrong.

Clearing up storage space

The S5 that I have is one I got as a warranty replacement last summer. It's running stock Lollipop rooted.
It's been running fine except for the fact that it's developed some lag. I mean that when I'm typing on the keyboard, it will sometimes hang for about 10 seconds and then turbo type all that I've typed to catch up. Also the lock screen will sometimes hang unresponsive for about 10 seconds, until it realizes that I want in and then let me type my pattern. I've also noticed that storage is getting full as sometimes I can't install App updates due to insufficient memory. I did install an app that managed to clean up about a half GB of internal storage, but that's not much. I know that If I was to do a factory reset with a reinstall of the apps, I'd have about 4 GB free. I could do that but it's a time consuming process and I'd have to spend time backing up apps and data with titanium... and Yes, I know about fixing the folder permissions after restoring with Titanium. Does someone know what is removed that does not get replaced with a factory wipe and reinstall? Is there something like a cache that I can delete to get to the end result of this work? What I'd like to know is if there is a shortcut to free memory that is not an app that I have to run every week or so.
Secondarily, the 64GB card I have in the phone is getting full. Yes... I know there are a lot of videos/photos/music on it, but there is a lot of old crap on it as well. When I upgraded to the S5 from my previous Android 2 phone, I upgraded the card from 32GB to 64GB. Not knowing what I needed and didn't, I simply copied everything over to the new card and plugged it in. I'm sure there probably exists a lot of junk from my old phone that I can delete. I have been thinking of getting a 128GB card, but before I do, I'd like to know what directories/files i could delete rather than just moving the entire card contents to the new card and moving along. Is there a good tutorial that I can read to understand what is stored on the card and what might not be necessary?

Internal storage space shrinking for no reason

A while ago even after moving all movable apps to SD card on my J730F/DS i was constantly out of space. Using CC cleaner i was deleting everything that could be deleted i was down to 4-500Mb free space on the internal memory.
Looking at all the apps i had installed there was no way that it could fill up the whole 16GB so i did a factory reset. After reset and reinstalling all the apps back and moved them back to SD card i had a cool 9.7GB free on internal memory. That was great i did not even care why and what was taking all that space.
All great and good for few days but one evening going to sleep i woke up next day and 1GB was gone. All updates disabled, phone just sitting and charging. It was annoying but still plenty of space.
One week later i decide to manually update the apps i wanted updated to see if the updates are eating up space even if the apps are on SD card. All good and done, apps moved back to SD after update, no change in storage space. Then 3 days later same thing over night i woke up and 700MB missing.
Another week has passed, no more updates just couple of ne apps installed and moved to SD. Storage space stays the same. I uninstalled all of the pre-loaded apps with ADB and all seems fine for few days. Today i woke up and another 700MB gone form internal storage.
This is getting ridiculous. I think they are doing something to the Android to eat up space in order for us to buy new phones, just as Apple was caught slowing down devices. I do not need a new one, this one does everything i need it to do.
Does anyone has an idea where all the space goes and how to recover it ?

Categories

Resources