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Issue with phone storage
- Thread starter Joe G2
- Start date
The first thing to understand is that that screenshot does not show everything, just certain types of your data use.
The big omission is that it doesn't show the space used by the ROM and system firmware. I don't know how much space those take on this specific phone, but I would guess that at most you have 10GB available out of that 16GB, with the rest being used by the system partitions.
Then the next question is what does that screen mean by "SD card"? Does it mean an actual removable SD card, or the emulated "internal sd card" (which appears as /sdcard to a file browser)? Because that second one is your internal storage emulating an SD card, and so if that's what the storage screen shows that's 7.4GB of your perhaps 10GB used right there. Throw in apps and app data, which your screen shows as 2.4 GB, and you've used almost 9GB. And don't forget that I'm only guessing how much space Samsung leave for you and how much they use for the system, it could be less than 10GB. If you want to know for sure, there's a really tiny app called "Storage Truth" written by one of our moderators, which you can find in the Play Store. That will tell you how much space is actually available for user files and data and how much is used by the system.
If that last item really is the removable card then yes, there's stuff to account for. But in that case consider that that screen is only showing usage that it can identify as falling into a small number of categories - anything else just isn't shown there. A better estimate would come from using a file explorer to see what is in your internal storage. Or try an app called DiskUsage, which can show a graphical view of how your storage is actually used.
The big omission is that it doesn't show the space used by the ROM and system firmware. I don't know how much space those take on this specific phone, but I would guess that at most you have 10GB available out of that 16GB, with the rest being used by the system partitions.
Then the next question is what does that screen mean by "SD card"? Does it mean an actual removable SD card, or the emulated "internal sd card" (which appears as /sdcard to a file browser)? Because that second one is your internal storage emulating an SD card, and so if that's what the storage screen shows that's 7.4GB of your perhaps 10GB used right there. Throw in apps and app data, which your screen shows as 2.4 GB, and you've used almost 9GB. And don't forget that I'm only guessing how much space Samsung leave for you and how much they use for the system, it could be less than 10GB. If you want to know for sure, there's a really tiny app called "Storage Truth" written by one of our moderators, which you can find in the Play Store. That will tell you how much space is actually available for user files and data and how much is used by the system.
If that last item really is the removable card then yes, there's stuff to account for. But in that case consider that that screen is only showing usage that it can identify as falling into a small number of categories - anything else just isn't shown there. A better estimate would come from using a file explorer to see what is in your internal storage. Or try an app called DiskUsage, which can show a graphical view of how your storage is actually used.
A factory reset will clear up space. Back up every thing of important first
Thanks for your answer. So I can confirm that the SD card is removable. I have downloaded. DiskUsage and I have uploaded 2 screenshots that display both the main phone storage (the 1st file) and the SD card storage (the 2nd file).
I have also attached a screenshot from Storage Truth.
What I am struggling to understand is how the system data is showing as 9.83 GB of storage used.
Attachments
So Storage Truth is showing quite modest system usage for a Samsung (they tend towards very large ROMs), with 10.9GB available to the user.
I've no idea what that "system data" might be. On my phone that category isn't even visible. Some system apps might store a lot of data (check how much your stock browser has in its cache: you might be shocked), but it's hard to see how it could grow to that size. It shouldn't be the system cache itself, as that should have its own partition (which would be invisible to storage truth unless you are rooted), though you could go into recovery and wipe the cache from there to be sure (just cache, nothing else - the other option is equivalent to a factory reset).
The trouble is, if you can't identify something that you can clear such as app caches that is responsible, and that sounds unlikely to me, you may need to do a factory reset to clear it - which is a hassle to back up and restore stuff.
Hence the factory reset I stated earlier.
That's what I would do.
That's what I would do.
Xavier Black
Android Expert
We would understand you are skeptical or if you will..hesitant about the factory reset..if that's the venue you don't wanna take..hear me out:
My mom has a J7..and does exactly what yours does..apparently the internal storage fills up too quickly so the phone starts acting up..freezing, lagging, sometimes reboots, asks for apps to be deleted and so on..
So I rescue her day in a way that turns out to be very effective by..
First you don't just simply clear the apps and users data..you actually manually delete it..
You have to go in the folder(any of your choice..the native is good)..then headed to
The Storage..where every single app you've downloaded hoarders bunch of data..then you go to each one and delete all that junk(make sure you save what you wanna save..then get rid of the rest.
Example..Whatsapp, you go inside through the folder..Media..videos..delete them, images..delete them, and so with the rest that are in there..
Then after that..you go to the phone system..look up strange..and then now you can clear the user and app data that is irrelevant.
I hope this helps.
My mom has a J7..and does exactly what yours does..apparently the internal storage fills up too quickly so the phone starts acting up..freezing, lagging, sometimes reboots, asks for apps to be deleted and so on..
So I rescue her day in a way that turns out to be very effective by..
First you don't just simply clear the apps and users data..you actually manually delete it..
You have to go in the folder(any of your choice..the native is good)..then headed to
The Storage..where every single app you've downloaded hoarders bunch of data..then you go to each one and delete all that junk(make sure you save what you wanna save..then get rid of the rest.
Example..Whatsapp, you go inside through the folder..Media..videos..delete them, images..delete them, and so with the rest that are in there..
Then after that..you go to the phone system..look up strange..and then now you can clear the user and app data that is irrelevant.
I hope this helps.