STORAGE ISSUE

[Superbowy]

Hello everyone,

I bought an Honor 8 about an year ago. It is a 32GB model. However, I am already starting to run out of space, even though it didn't seem to me I was using so much.
I went in the storage section, and the different storage sections do not add up to 32 GB, it is lower.

Has anyone experienced the same problem ? Can someone help in anyway ?? I would really like to get back my storage space, as I really need it.

I can of course post any screeshots or additional informations needed below.

Thanks everyone !!

 

[kate]

Welcome to the site!

The Android OS is stored on a separate partition and can take up 4 - 8 gigabytes depending on the phone. I'm guessing you have around 25GB of storage available? That would be normal.

A screenshot would help.

 

[svim]

With 32GB of storage, if you're running low on free space you've obviously been busy on your phone the past year. Either a lot of apps; or a sizable collection of photos, songs, and such; or perhaps a few high res videos? (vids can take up a lot of space). If you can't clear some space using the Settings >> Storage or transfer enough to a microSD card, try installing this 'DiskUsage' app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.diskusage&hl=en
It'll give you graphical way to view what's on your storage media and might help reveal what's taking up so much space.

 

[dontpanicbobby]

Plunk a MicroSD card in it and move all download movies and songs there.

 

[Serkahu]

I have the same issue, disk usage app shows the internal memory has 24 gb instead of 32 gb (screenshot), where did the rest go? I suppose android OS is part of the 14 gb used by system data. Is this correct? Thanks

 

[Hadron]

I have the same issue, disk usage app shows the internal memory has 24 gb instead of 32 gb (screenshot), where did the rest go? I suppose android OS is part of the 14 gb used by system data. Is this correct? Thanks

No, it isn't correct. The android OS lives in a separate partition. Actually there are several system partitions for different types of system firmware. The 24 GB is what's left after you subtract those partitions.

One qualification: you'll note it says "GiB" rather than "GB". This is an attempt to disambiguate binary GB (2^30 bytes), which is what computers actually care about, from decimal GB (10^9 bytes), which is about 7% smaller and is what storage device manufacturers use. This is showing binary, in which units your "32 GB" device actually has 29.7 GB of storage. So if the user-accessible internal storage is 24 GB then just under 6GB has been allocated for the system partitions (which is a reasonable value).

Now what is in your 14 GB "system data" I can't say. My own phone doesn't have such a category at all in DiskUsage. It might be updates to system apps, or data stored by such apps - these things are visible to DiskUsage in my Pixel, but your Honor might handle it differently. I'm afraid I can only speculate.

 

[Serkahu]

Thanks a lot for the clarification @Hadron . So how can i know what "System data" contains? isnt 14 GiB too much?

 

[Hadron]

I've no idea what it contains, and hence can't say whether it's too much. As I say, my own Pixel doesn't show anything of that sort. It could be junk like large log files, or it might be something important.

You could try something like "SD Maid", which is a powerful disk cleaning tool (and so should be used with caution: don't just accept every suggestion for things you could delete, think about them). That can give you a different view of what is using your space, and may be able to identify things you could clear. Whether it will select things in this "system data" category I don't know, but it might be worth looking at.

 

[Serkahu]

I tried SD Maid but it would only release a few MB. However it turned that around 10 GiB in System data was from Spotify, so after deleting the stored media i got quite a lot of extra space now. Thanks for your help @Hadron!!

 

[Hadron]

Interesting: I ccan't think whyaanything stored by Spotify should be classed as "system data". But that may be useful to know in future.

 

[Serkahu]

Actually before deleting anything, Diskusage showed some GB used as media (first screenshot) assigned to Spotify, so I proceeded to delete it. However, after deletion not only does System Data take much less space, but also the space assigned as media by DiskUsage is now gone as well (not showing in second screenshot). So not sure what it means, but happy to get extra space though!