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Help Cleaning /data without root

S

Scaffold

Lurker
Hello everyone!

I did my research, but still have no answer. The question: is it possible to clean /data directory without rooting phone? I believe I have a lot of unneeded stuff stored there and consuming my memory.
Just in case: Desire 601 Dual Sim.
Before anyone suggests cleaning application cache and data: I know how to clean application cache and data. Still an awful lot of my memory is locked out of usage.
From what I gathered during my research, this must be tombstones in /data folder - correct?
Any ideas?
 
Well you can clean /data with a factory reset (that's what a factory reset does, and all it does). But you have to ensure that the stuff you want to keep is backed up first and then restore it afterwards. I don't know of a way of selectively clearing bits of /data without root, but maybe someone will have an idea.

No certainty that your theory is correct though. I just took a peek at /data/tombstones on my phone and it's a whole 118kB in size. If you have a lot of crashes it could get large, but there could be other stuff (e.g. orphaned folders on /sdcard from uninstalled apps might be worth checking for, and don't need root to deal with them).
 
I'm pretty sure I have a lot of memory lost in a /data folder. But I can't see any /tombstones subdirectory there. It's a bit beyond my understanding. I need help.
Of course, I can do factory reset. But it is a nuclear option.
 
I'm no stranger to factory reset, that's why I'm a bit reluctant to do it.
Is there any way to prevent such memory leaks after crashes in the future?
 
It's not a "memory leak" in the technical sense - it's crash logs/dump files. I would expect the system would clean them up after a while; at any rate, there's nothing older than 2 days in mine.

If there is a way of doing anything about it, it's going to require root. That's always the answer when you want to change system behaviour.
 
Scaffold said:
I'm no stranger to factory reset, that's why I'm a bit reluctant to do it.
Is there any way to prevent such memory leaks after crashes in the future?
Click to expand...
You can try ES File Explorer, it will help clean up orphaned files on an uninstall.

For your SD card, you might Check out "SD Maid - System Cleaning Tool"

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.thedarken.sdm

I don't endorse anything else as most all of it is snake oil.

The reason that it's hard to do without a factory data reset comes down to the definition of protected.

The /data partition is protected. That means that the system is designed to not let apps get to storage areas that don't belong to them and aren't being accessed physically by the user at a pc, and only with USB debugging enabled.

Without that protection, kiss your private accounts goodbye.

And I really, really hate to be that guy, but for your future enjoyment - this is not a memory leak.

A memory leak has to do with running process being granted ram as it runs and then not surrendering it to the system when it's supposed to - so the longer it runs the more ram it eats. It's like the free ram is just leaking out of a bucket with a hole in the bottom, like water. That's how we got the term.

This is probably better referred to as dealing with orphaned files.

Those don't happen as often on Android as a lot of cleaning apps claim btw.
 
Small footnote: a day later I checked my tombstones folder again and there is still nothing more than 48 hours old in there - stuff from the 8th has been deleted.

So you may well have orphaned files, but I doubt it's that specific folder that's the main issue (unless your phone is set up very differently from mine).
 
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