Help Galaxy Tab A 10.1 - System Data Taking up ~10 GB

[JPH10]

My model is SM-T580 and I'm running Android 8.1.0. I have been getting the running out of memory warning and trying to figure out what is going on.

When I look at internal storage from the System Interface, I see see 13.7 of 16GB used, with 13.7GB of system/user data. It lists ~54MB for docs, ~31MB for images, ~5MB for audio, and 4.6GB for apps. That leaves a bit over 9GB unaccounted for, a bit over 3GB of which should be for the sytem.

When I use Storage Truth on my tablet I see that the system is actually blocking 3.24 GB with 2.58 used and .66 free; however, I have repeated data entries that start with data/knox/ and go on to: secure_fs/enc_user; secure/fs/enc_media; data_de/150; misc_de/150; data/150; and misc_ce/150, which say 10.64GB, 8.31GB used; 2.33 GB free.

What the heck is the 8.31gb used? Or the unaccounted for 6GB or so? How do I get rid of whatever is bloating up my device? I already have as storage card in and I can move apps over, but I'm still concerned about the internal storage being eaten up. Does it have to do with the phase out of Knox, which used to be on there? Did it block off a segment of storage before it was pulled from the system? Anyway, I'll stop rapid-firing questions. Would love help if anyone has seen (and hopefully solved) this issue. Thanks!

 

[ocnbrze]

welcome to AF!!!!!!!!!!!

as you are finding out part of your internal storage is your system apps.....basically your stock rom. to fully make more space you will have to looking into rooting your device and install a custom rom that's probably smaller and without the bloatware samsung likes to add.

 

[Hadron]

It's only updates to system apps, and of course those apps' data, that use your internal storage. The version of those apps that's in the ROM lives in the system partition. Therefore you can reclaim some space by disabling unused system apps: that removes updates for the disabled app and clears its data, so has the same effect on your available storage as uninstalling the app. The catch is that the ROM may not let you: they should only prevent this for really vital apps, but I've known Samsung block disabling for pure bloat (3rd party apps you can install from the Play Store that they chose to - or more likely were paid to - include in the ROM).

10.64 GB sounds plausible for the available storage on a 16GB device. The question is, what else is stored on it? Because docs, images, audio and apps is not a comprehensive list of all types of data that you might store, and so anything else will be contributing to the mysterious "missing" space.

You could try the DiskUsage app: that can give a fairly comprehensive view of what is using the space, by directory rather than by categories where you don't know exactly how they are defined.