Help Miscellaneous Files wont delete

[Ryan Brobin]

Hi all, I searched around the forum and the issue most people ask is if they can safely delete their Misc files. However my issue is that after I delete all of them, none of the storage is removed from misc files or shows as available space again. Im having this problem on my Galaxy Tab A. Its ridiculous that I thought I bought a 16 gig tablet and only have 1 gig of space available and only 3 gigs used on apps, music, videos, and pictures. And ive already gone through and moved everything that could be moved to my sd card, and uninstalled all the bloatware updates.

Also heres a couple other quick questions...

Can the memory used in System Memory be reduced at all?

Is there a way to download directly to your sd card so that you dont have to have enough space on the device itself?

Ooh also, I downloaded some digital movie copies and I see theyre available to watch through the Google Play Movie app offline, but I cant find the actual movie files anywhere to hopefully move them to the sd card. I looked through the default Storage Files app but saw no sign of them. Where would those be?

 

[JaronH]

You could root and delete them, if you'd like to give your entire OS a heartfelt goodbye. Most files in Misc. are Android's necessary files, and deleting them will render your device useless. Sorry.

Now to answer your other questions:

No, you can't reduce system memory. Android will take up a few gigabytes of storage.

If you're talking downloaded apps from the Google Play Store on to the SD card, you can't do that, unfortunately. You'll have to see which apps you can move to SD, yourself. You can't move all apps without root, however.

As for the movie thing, I don't know. But I hope I helped you the best way I can.

-Jaron

 

[Ryan Brobin]

I thank you for your help on some there, but Im not too sure about that. Ive seen multiple videos where people delete all or most of their miscellaneous files getting all the way down to zero memory. Why should my tablet need 5.5 gigs of memory for necessary android os processes and files in Miscellaneous on top of the 5 or 6 gigs already dedicated to System Memory? That means 75% of my "available" memory is dedicated to system operations. And if thats the case I want my money back.

Is anyone else aware of this particular issue?

 

[JaronH]

I thank you for your help on some there, but Im not too sure about that. Ive seen multiple videos where people delete all or most of their miscellaneous files getting all the way down to zero memory. Why should my tablet need 5.5 gigs of memory for necessary android os processes and files in Miscellaneous on top of the 5 or 6 gigs already dedicated to System Memory? That means 75% of my "available" memory is dedicated to system operations. And if thats the case I want my money back.

Is anyone else aware of this particular issue?

I think you may have misread my post a bit, or I'm misreading yours. Your system doesn't take up 10GB of space for itself. Anything after that 5.5GB is all yours, or your manufacturer's. All OS processes make up part of that system memory, and don't have their own partition. You should have a reasonable amount of system space, like mine.

 

[eshieldsvx4]

Hi all, I searched around the forum and the issue most people ask is if they can safely delete their Misc files. However my issue is that after I delete all of them, none of the storage is removed from misc files or shows as available space again. Im having this problem on my Galaxy Tab A. Its ridiculous that I thought I bought a 16 gig tablet and only have 1 gig of space available and only 3 gigs used on apps, music, videos, and pictures. And ive already gone through and moved everything that could be moved to my sd card, and uninstalled all the bloatware updates.

Also heres a couple other quick questions...

Can the memory used in System Memory be reduced at all?

Is there a way to download directly to your sd card so that you dont have to have enough space on the device itself?

Ooh also, I downloaded some digital movie copies and I see theyre available to watch through the Google Play Movie app offline, but I cant find the actual movie files anywhere to hopefully move them to the sd card. I looked through the default Storage Files app but saw no sign of them. Where would those be?

Some temporary files are recreated by installed apps. These apps recreate this data based on what you do within the app. If you download or stream in your app, those are the files that let you advance view before a download is complete.

For example, I can't clear my cache entirely. Every app has at least 12 KB left. I guess that's the affect of a deodexed ROM so that any adjustments I make to system UI (such as theming) don't break the app.

 

[Ryan Brobin]

Ok so what can I actually do to solve my problem? If you look at the screen shot I posted it shows
Total Space: 16 GB
Available Space: 1.16 GB
System Memory: 4.91 GB
Miscellaneous Files: 5.88 GB

The remaining 4 GB is all of my apps, which also sucks because I move every app over to my memory card that I can. I've deleted all bloatware updates and disabled them, and deleted every app I don't feel I need on there. I feel like I'm doing not only everything I can but more than I should have to, and still don't even have the room to download a digital movie copy from the little paper codes you get with movies now. This is ridiculous. What can I actually do? Should I just forsake Samsung and sell this thing and go look for a different brand? I would really like to make this one work since I don't have money to spend frivolously. And please keep in mind that I'm not super tech savvy.

 

[Hadron]

There's nothing you can do about system storage. That's a separate partition, so even if you could remove stuff from there it wouldn't give you more space you could use yourself.

"Miscellaneous" isn't a useful category. It just means "anything that isn't an app, photo, video or music file". Some of that is junk, some of it may be essential, some of it it temporary files which will regenerate soon after you remove them (e.g. gallery thumbnails, which will be recreated the next time your gallery app runs). So whether you can or should clear them depends on what the individual files are.

Things you can try: clearing app caches (using the application manager in Settings, or one of many apps - avoid anything from Cheetah Mobile though). SD Maid is a powerful cleaning app, but use with care: it doesn't know what you want to keep so will offer to remove stuff you don't want to remove. So always check through what it offers and deselect stuff you don't want removed before telling it to actually delete stuff. Remember there is no "recycle bin" so anything you delete is gone.

As for your movies, I don't use that app but chances are it's saved them as internal app data (which you can't access without root) to stop people copying them. So your best bet for cleaning those up is to delete them within the app. Whether you can choose where media download to depends on the app that downloads them.