Help "Low on space" phone/application storage notification

[euph_22]

I am having the same issue. All of my memory stats look very good for both internal and SD card storage, but I get the Low On space notification. If I move a few programs to the SD card it seems to go away for a while, but by the next day it's back.


This started a day or two after the 2.3.4 OS update I received last week. I have never seen this in the past 1+ years I've had this phone, and I didn't install anything new. Somehow it MUST be related to the update.


Moving applications around simply doesn't make sense if the phone is reporting that memory is not low. It is not a long-term fix. Replies on this forum to clear caches etc are all fine, and I've done that, but they do not address the real issue, which is why it is complaining that memory is low while simultaneously showing plenty of available memory.


The quoted statement that the phone will complain if the /data/data partition of the DINC is above 14 or 15MB sounds like a promising lead, but using Astro File Manager it says that /data is an empty folder, let alone /data/data (which doesn't exist)! I am not familiar with the file structure of an Android phone so I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, so please be kind Can someone help me out?


Thanks!

Astro doesn't have root permission, so all it doesn't see the /data/data partition except as an empty folder in the file structure. If you aren't rooted, you can't see it period. (If you had root, you can install a different file explorer (root explorer or es file explorer for example, there are others).)

What happens when you moved the apps to the sd card is you also relocated the lib files to the sd card FROM the /data/data partition. You should go on a blitz and move alot of the big apps to the sd card. At the very least that should buy you more time between cache clearing sessions.

 

[dpicker3]

Thanks for your reply. I do not have root. I moved several additional of my largest apps to the SD Card and the notification went away. Let's see for how long...

 

[NightAngel79]

I am having the same issue. All of my memory stats look very good for both internal and SD card storage, but I get the Low On space notification. If I move a few programs to the SD card it seems to go away for a while, but by the next day it's back.


This started a day or two after the 2.3.4 OS update I received last week. I have never seen this in the past 1+ years I've had this phone, and I didn't install anything new. Somehow it MUST be related to the update.


Moving applications around simply doesn't make sense if the phone is reporting that memory is not low. It is not a long-term fix. Replies on this forum to clear caches etc are all fine, and I've done that, but they do not address the real issue, which is why it is complaining that memory is low while simultaneously showing plenty of available memory.


The quoted statement that the phone will complain if the /data/data partition of the DINC is above 14 or 15MB sounds like a promising lead, but using Astro File Manager it says that /data is an empty folder, let alone /data/data (which doesn't exist)! I am not familiar with the file structure of an Android phone so I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, so please be kind Can someone help me out?


Thanks!

You need root access to to even think about getting near the data/data partition, even then there isn't a lot you can do about it. If you root there is a program called Not Enough Space that others have said works wonders.

Also, moving apps around with GB is so that on a GB phone when moving an app to SD card it actually moves more of the app to SD, thus freeing up more space for you... try moving from SD to phone, then back to SD and see if that helps (you never know)


edit: didnt see last two replies, lol
What euph said

 

[Medion]

Thanks for your reply. I do not have root. I moved several additional of my largest apps to the SD Card and the notification went away. Let's see for how long...

Here's the problem. Prior to the GB update, the lib files stayed in the internal storage, even if the app was moved to SD. This doesn't change automatically with the update to GB. So, you have to move the app back to phone, then back to SD to clear out those lib files. So, one by one, move an app back to phone, then back to SD. Once you've done this with all apps, you're in the clear.

 

[NightAngel79]

^that

 

[VolsMcFalls]

My wife's phone is having this problem as well and I have done everything I know to do and yet she still has this problem.

She is NOT on GB yet, but this low space notification showed up out of the blue (she hadn't added any apps). She wanted me to fix it, so here's what I've done...

I cleared her web cache, history, etc. I also moved ALL of the movable apps over to the SD card. I even uninstalled several apps that remained on the phone that she doesn't need any more.

And she STILL has the notification. We've tried rebooting the phone, including a battery pull. Nothing. And she asks me every say to fix it. So I need your help. Please help me get my wife off my back.

Is there another cache that I should clear or something? I moved a lot of MB of apps to the sd card and nothing changed. In the past, I've just had to clear the web cache and history and that usually takes care of the problem. Not this time though.

 

[NightAngel79]

Read the last 20 posts or so... It's all about the data. See post where I linked several very good explanation/fixes....

 

[bird jam]

I can't take this anymore. Now I'm getting a space warning screen sometimes when I'm browsing. It's interfering with my use of the damned phone. I was hoping gingerbread might solve this issue, but somehow it's made it worse?

I'll be buying a new phone soon (maybe what HTC wanted?) but in the meantime a question: can I get rid of this problem by rooting? I had no desire to root, but feel like I don't have a choice at this point.

 

[jmar]

I know I'm in the Incredible Forum, but I got to thinking...

How many HTC phones, including the Incredible have this data/data/ partition problem? For a phone that has 8gb of internal hard drive space and 768mb RAM, only allowing 150mb of app data in a special partition is an absolute joke. While I am excited for the HTC Vigor (Incredible HD?), I will turn my back to it if it contains the same ridiculous partitioning. I have 6 months until my upgrade is official, so I have lots of time to read and digest all the info to be had in that time frame. Okay, I'm ranting...

How many HTC phones have this problem. Will the Vigor follow suit?

jmar

 

[euph_22]

I know I'm in the Incredible Forum, but I got to thinking...

How many HTC phones, including the Incredible have this data/data/ partition problem? For a phone that has 8gb of internal hard drive space and 768mb RAM, only allowing 150mb of app data in a special partition is an absolute joke. While I am excited for the HTC Vigor (Incredible HD?), I will turn my back to it if it contains the same ridiculous partitioning. I have 6 months until my upgrade is official, so I have lots of time to read and digest all the info to be had in that time frame. Okay, I'm ranting...

How many HTC phones have this problem. Will the Vigor follow suit?

jmar

As far as I know, the number of HTC phones with this issue is...1. It's not a joke at all. Certainly not the best choice they made in the design, but this is the first phone with this much space for apps. They didn't have anything to base the size of the /data/data partition on, and they guessed wrong. That is the long and short of how this bug came to be. Typical apps put more stuff in the /data/data partition they HTC expected.

 

[dpicker3]

I moved every downloaded app I had to phone, and then all of them back to SD card. I still have the low memory notification.

Something is really screwed up with GB.

One clue: after the interim step of moving all of my apps to the phone I got a 2nd notification, this time that "memory should be kept at great than 512kB to continue getting messages" or something like that. It doesn't make sense because even with all apps on the phone (in internal memory) I had over 400MB of internal memory left. Anyway, that specific notification went away pretty quickly when I began moving apps back to the SD Card. However, the low-memory notification is still there! HELP!!!

 

[Legobricke]

The main culprits for me and the low space error were:

FACEBOOK - I cleared all the cache and data.

FACEBOOK FOR HTC SENSE - I cleared all the cache and data

ADOBE AIR - I deleted

ADOBE FLASH - Uninstalled the updates

MAIL (HTC) - I cleared all the cache and data - Then downloaded K9 Mail and I currently use that.

Not saying this will work for everyone... but this corrected my issue with low space..

Lego

 

[jmar]

As far as I know, the number of HTC phones with this issue is...1. It's not a joke at all. Certainly not the best choice they made in the design, but this is the first phone with this much space for apps. They didn't have anything to base the size of the /data/data partition on, and they guessed wrong. That is the long and short of how this bug came to be. Typical apps put more stuff in the /data/data partition they HTC expected.

Thank you for your response. I would hate to get another HTC phone only to deal with the same problem, especially since I'd be getting the latest and greatest!

 

[txrxio]

The market app seems to bloat itself pretty quickly now, so that is another potential source of the issue. And Google maps can balloon in size when it caches.

 

[cheesed@HTC]

First started i couldnt save anymore pics (no icon or major warnings at this point)... started cleaning up things, removing apps - nothing helped. Finally USBd to PC and found that the .MAIL folder was CRAMMED full of token/old emails - erased a whack of them... BUT in my app list it still says i have 117 MB in there - and there isnt! Seems like the "counter" isnt resetting or something. I've removed all cache, music, apps, etc. - down to bare bones and its still counting upwards - even disconnected the email accounts from the widget/shortcut... nothing is helping. Tried connecting as drive and reconnecting as charge only, tried rebooting / removing battery. Now the icon is there constantly - cant message, email... can only talk on phone and use google maps (yes i cleaned those out too). Short of resetting there must be a way to sync the system counter? (which shows correctly in 1 tap cleaner et al)... what the? any ideas on how we can do that? removing apps / data / cache doesnt seem to be the solution ... it will just fill up again

 

[Bob Denny]

You will NOT believe what I found today! In case it isn't clear, the "space low" message appears when you have less than 15MB in your /data/data partition. For some stupid reason, HTC/Google left us with 6Gb of space and limited application data storage to 140 Mb. WTF??? As you know, there's no end to the "secrets" which allow you to clear small bits of space from /data/data, getting rid of the "low space" message... temporarily! Well, today I found a pile of junk in /data/data and by deleting it, I recovered 40+ Mb of /data/data space! That's HUGE!

Here's the article I just posted on this issue.

I posted it in the root section because you need root to fix it.

 

[Bob Denny]

CFD23, as original poster on this long thread may I suggest that you make it clear up front that there is only one reason for that Application data space is low message, and that is when the 140Mb /data/data partition gets below 15Mb. PERIOD.

Not in a quoted block below your post. Right in the first sentence.

The thousands of posts here advising people to do this or that are mostly just shots in the dark, and won't have a lasting effect. /data/data is where apps store their private data. The more apps and the more data those apps save the more space is needed. Moving an app to SD for example has little effect because its data still stays in /data/data (it's lib files do move from /data/data though). Clearing an app's data clears its space in /data/data but if you use the app, the data is gonna come back.

I know of no long term fix except for HTC to carve out about half of of /emmc (3 Gb) and make THAT the /data/data partition!!!!! I believe it could be done!

 

[cjw314]

if you're receiving a low storage space, that's normal - anytime you dip under 25 MB you get that warning and it will not go away until you free up some storage space.

Ok, so what if I have 500+MB of space and I get that warning? ...and please don't suggest I "hard reset". -.-



+---+
chris

 

[Roze]

Hi Chris and welcome to AF

I moved your post to the Incredible Forum!

You might want to check out this thread that talks about low space

 

[Mitch R.]

I had that happen a couple weeks ago. Plenty of free space yet the message persisted. I deleted my Contacts cache (or did a clear data, can't remember which) and I haven't seen the message since.

 

[stelrz1]

My incredible continually says storage almost full. When I check my stats there is only 1/3 of my phone storage used and only 1 gig of my 16 gig card being used. How do I get rid of this warning?

 

[euph_22]

My incredible continually says storage almost full. When I check my stats there is only 1/3 of my phone storage used and only 1 gig of my 16 gig card being used. How do I get rid of this warning?

There is a big thread stickied to the top of the support subforum. Read it (starting from page 12, and then the last page or 2).

 

[clipperqb]

My incredible continually says storage almost full. When I check my stats there is only 1/3 of my phone storage used and only 1 gig of my 16 gig card being used. How do I get rid of this warning?

I'm going to get rid of it by getting a new phone.

 

[nonpareilpearl]

I have been investigating why none of my Google accounts have been syncing since Wednesday. Around that time, although I didn't immediately make the connection, I also began seeing an icon on my status bar reporting low storage space.

Initially I tried troubleshooting the syncing issue by clearing the user data (settings -> applications -> ...) for GMail/G+/etc., but to no avail (it simply states that it is "waiting to sync" now). I saw in another thread that users reported that if they were running low on storage, they couldn't sync. I guess that makes sense.

Only there's one problem: I'm not actually running low on storage space. According to the SD & phone storage I currently have the following space *available*:
14.55 GB of 14.83 GB on my SD card
5.91 GB of 6.60 GB on my internal storage

Not that it counts for storage, but I also have a lot of free memory (517 MB of 748 MB).

My question is: where is this "low storage" error coming from and how do I fix it?

Additional information:
- I have not (yet?) rooted my phone
- OS is Android 2.3.4
- My carrier is Verizon

EDIT: I also wanted to add that I use App2SD Pro to move as many apps as possible to my SD card, so all apps that can moved to the SD card have been.

UPDATE: I fixed the issue. I went into Settings -> Applications and organized my applications by size. I went through and started deleting the cache and after I was 4 or 5 apps down the error disappeared and I was able to sync again. YAY!

 

[bobarr]

I stumbled upon the culprit that caused my memory low error! It was contacts2.db in /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts. I have about 50 contacts, and this file was 55MB. I deleted it, rebooted, and reloaded contacts from my backup and now contacts2.db is less than 1MB. Lots of room now!
Bo