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No more space, no more memory, bigger SD card doesn't help

S

simpler

Member
I had a 16GB SD card on my Samsung Exhibit phone until yesterday; both the internal memory and the SD card were almost full, so I coukdn't download a thing. Yesterday I bought a 32GB SD card and copied the entire contents of the old card to the new card. But the internal memory was still nearly full and I couldn't open the gallery. So I thought I'd free up memory by moving an app to SD. Message: SD card full.

I uninstalled Gemini App Manager. Same thing.

Perhaps I should have been suspicious, rather than delighted, when my phone opened to the same Web page with the new card as with the old.

I paid good money for a bigger SD card, and it seems all for nought. Can you help me?
 
Does the phone see the card as 32GB? You should be able to see if you look under Storage in Settings. If it does, then maybe the problem you get when you try moving stuff to SD is because you need more internal space in order to process the request.

I think you're on the right track trying to clear more internal storage, though. Have you tried uninstalling something you don't use - or maybe updates on something you don't need immediately - to free up space, then try moving to to SD again?
 
simpler said:
I had a 16GB SD card on my Samsung Exhibit phone until yesterday; both the internal memory and the SD card were almost full, so I coukdn't download a thing. Yesterday I bought a 32GB SD card and copied the entire contents of the old card to the new card. But the internal memory was still nearly full and I couldn't open the gallery. So I thought I'd free up memory by moving an app to SD. Message: SD card full.

I uninstalled Gemini App Manager. Same thing.

Perhaps I should have been suspicious, rather than delighted, when my phone opened to the same Web page with the new card as with the old.

I paid good money for a bigger SD card, and it seems all for nought. Can you help me?
Click to expand...

I think the system is telling you that the internal sd card which is embedded into the phone is full, not your external sd card which you can plug into the slot. This is why when you bought another external memory card it still didn't solve the problem of the internal memory being full.

What Web browser are you trying to use and what program are you trying to download and how much memory does it say you have left on the internal Rom and internal sd card?
 
I encountered this problem when I tried to access the Gallery - there wasn't enough memory to open it.

Does my phone know I have more storage space? Yes and no; it depends on what path you take. If I access the storage data through the task manager, the phone tells me, correctly, that the SD card is half full and the USB memory is nearly full. But if I try to access the storage info through Settings, the phone tells me that I still have a 16GB SDcard. And if I hit "Move to SD card" in the stock app manager, the message comes, "SD card is full."

I have Gingerbread and use the stock browser and music player. If I don't have enough memory to access the stock music player, I listen with Amazon MP3.
 
simpler;[URL="tel:[URL="tel:5739926" said:
5739926[/URL]"]5739926[/URL]]I encountered this problem when I tried to access the Gallery - there wasn't enough memory to open it.

Does my phone know I have more storage space? Yes and no; it depends on what path you take. If I access the storage data through the task manager, the phone tells me, correctly, that the SD card is half full and the USB memory is nearly full. But if I try to access the storage info through Settings, the phone tells me that I still have a 16GB SDcard. And if I hit "Move to SD card" in the stock app manager, the message comes, "SD card is full."

I have Gingerbread and use the stock browser and music player. If I don't have enough memory to access the stock music player, I listen with Amazon MP3.
Click to expand...

As others have said, sounds like you don't have enough internal memory to process the request. You phone is set up with two SD cards. (Internal phone storage SD and External SD card that you put in.) If under the settings> storage you have everything saved to internal storage, then everything you save will be saved to that location. If you selected, save to SD card, which is in your case the 32GB SD card, that's the location everything will be saved to.

In the settings> storage you should see three different storage locations listed. (App. storage, internal storage, and SD card) Usually, at least on my phone, the internal storage and SD card should tell you the total storage space and how much is available.

You might have to use a computer or laptop to move your files from the internal storage to SD card, by mounting your phone as a USB drive.

Edited: I forgot to mention that apps are moved to internal storage, not SD card, when going thru settings> applications.
 
Oh, so when I tap "Move to SD card," the phone tries to move the app to internal storage, which is full? And the internal storage is also where the memory is? What is stored in app storage?

Sorry, the phone really does know I have a bigger external SD card, But if my music and photos are on the USB drive, and would be wiped out if I reformatted the USB storage, then what the **** is taking up half the space on my external SD card?
 
simpler;[URL="tel:5740848" said:
5740848[/URL]]Oh, so when I tap "Move to SD card," the phone tries to move the app to internal storage, which is full? And the internal storage is also where the memory is? What is stored in app storage?

Sorry, the phone really does know I have a bigger external SD card, But if my music and photos are on the USB drive, and would be wiped out if I reformatted the USB storage, then what the **** is taking up half the space on my external SD card?
Click to expand...

Question 1) Yes. Your phone is moving the app to internal storage. From what I know, app storage is usually a lot smaller then the internal memory storage.

Question 2) Correct, internal storage is your on board storage. So, if you didn't have an SD card, everything would be stored there.

Question 3) App storage is where all app apk files are stored. (Nothing else can be stored in this space.) So, if your phone only has 2 GB of apps storage, then that's all the space you have for apps.) Unless you move some apps to internal storage. If you do this, how ever much space those apps took up in the apps storage will be given back to it after the apps are moved to internal storage.

Question 4) Not sure what you mean by the USB drive. (Unless your referring to the SD card.) In any case, if you reformat it, yes, you will lose everything on it. (You can back up the SD card to a computer or laptop.

Question 5) The only way to see what's taking up the space is to use a file manager app. to see what files are on the SD card and internal memory. (You will be able to see the size of these files as well.) Music, high end video games, pictures and video usually take up a lot of space.
 
The card has nothing to do wth the memory issue, its all about internal memory. Move some media files from internal storage to external storage, like pictures and music.
 
OK, I haven't been around because it's taken me this long to get to a real computer that's not the office computer.

Thanks, jefboyardee. But let me see now:

I've moved some apps to the SD card, uninstalled updates on apps I'm stuck with but never use, but after a while I got the message "SD card is full," and even when I move some apps back to the phone it still says "SD card is full."

Can't play the stock music app; always get the message "Not enough memory." I've been using the Amazon MP3 player for the time being, but it doesn't have as many features, nor is it suitable for home use without a headset.

I was able to download another app: Google Drive.

Here is what I encounter:

In Settings, in Storage tab:

SD card:
Total space: 29.71GB
Available space: 16.83GB

USB storage:
Total space: 1.62GB
Available space: 2.69MB

Device memory:
Available space: 582MB

In Applications tab:
Downloaded:
Device memory: 502MB used, 590MB free

All:
Device memory: 495MB used, 598MB free

On SD card:
USB storage: 1.6GB used, 2.7MB free

Running:
RAM: 149MB used, 125MB free

So USB storage is the bottleneck. How can I clear up space there?

Please help
 
I have a Motorola phone so my storage specs come up different than yours, but from your list USB Storage has to be your internal storage. This makes sense because the specs for your phone show 4 GB of internal storage which always only leaves about 2 GB usable for the end-user. Your need to uninstall some apps or delete items from your internal memory. This will free up space.

My previous phone was the Xperia Play and it also had only 4 GB of internal memory. I was constantly having to move things to free up internal space. Because of that experience, internal storage is a important spec I consider when shopping for phones.
 
I don't know why last night's post never got posted, but I'll try to reconstruct it:

According to what I found when I checked my device last night, I have over 17GB empty on my new 32GB card, but it is inaccessible because the USB storage is COMPLETELY full. When I try to access USB storage on my device in order to clear it out, I get the message that it's empty.

Meanwhile, I can't download even a PDF file, let alone an e-book or a music file. The only things I can download are updates to the files I already have. When I try to move an app from the phone to the SD card, I get the message "SD card is full." Even tho it isn't. Why can't those Google programmers at least program Android to tell the truth?

I cannot use the stock music app because there's "not enough memory." For the same reason I can't open the gallery. I can listen to my music on Amazon MP3, but I'd rather not have to resort to that.

FBReader opens to the wrong books, but I don't know if that is related.

I regularly clear the cache, and I do what passes for optimizing RAM on Gemini, but it doesn't help one whit. I can't clear the cache on the stock browser.

The browser crashes several times a day. Sometimes the OS goes into a loop in which it reboots every few seconds.

The link that csrow recommended here:

>If you are on 2.3.5 ROM (not updated ROM), then you can flash a SWAP SD file to switch the Ext-SD with the internal SD.

>the SWAP SD file can be downloaded here. You will have to know how to flash a zip file from the recovery.
>Dev-Host - swapsd.01.zip - The Ultimate Free File Hosting / File Sharing Service

is no longer available.

I have uninstalled ALL the downloaded apps that I think I can do without even the apps that I'd rather have,, and I'm not updating the unremovable bloatware that I never use.

I fear that the only solution may be to restore factory settings, but how do I save my precious files and bookmarks? I have MyBackupPro and Dropbox (don't ask me why I have both, but I don't know which one will help me now so I'm not uninstalling either of them). I've tried to back up to MyBackupPro, but the big problem is music files. The backup process never completes for music, and when it stops the entire effort is wasted. Can I copy my music library to a flash drive and reinstall it on my SD card? Can I do that with ebooks too? (All my ebooks and music files are DRM-free.)
 
I cleared my phone's call log. I freed up over 100MB of RAM with Gemini. I moved the widgets for never-used unremovable apps off my desktop. Still not a single byte ofUSB memory has been freed; there is still 0.00B free. What am I going to do? How do I access the internal SD card and clean it out? The usual advice to delete stuff and simplify things is NOT working. Could somebody PLEASE answer the questions I asked on my last post?
 
simpler said:
I had a 16GB SD card on my Samsung Exhibit phone until yesterday; both the internal memory and the SD card were almost full, so I coukdn't download a thing. Yesterday I bought a 32GB SD card and copied the entire contents of the old card to the new card. But the internal memory was still nearly full and I couldn't open the gallery. So I thought I'd free up memory by moving an app to SD. Message: SD card full.

I uninstalled Gemini App Manager. Same thing.

Perhaps I should have been suspicious, rather than delighted, when my phone opened to the same Web page with the new card as with the old.

I paid good money for a bigger SD card, and it seems all for nought. Can you help me?
Click to expand...
Your problem is that the location of your dalvik-cache is out of memory. When you install a new app, it requires space in dalvik -- if there is no room, it doesn't matter how much space you have elsewhere. The answer is to move the dalvik cache to a partition/drive that is not storage limited.
 
sounds like you have 3 storage areas going on:

internal phone
internal sd card
external sd card

for whatever reason, my samsung galaxy s mesmerize is the same. it only seems to permit data to be stored on the external. no apps can be moved there. any of the app2sd programs only move things between the internal phone and the internal sd card.

so, i have it set up to store all video, dcim, ebooks on the external sd card.

hopefully this helps. i was pissed when i first discovered this.
 
I'm afraid it doesn't help :( Thanks anyway.

Now in addition to all previous troubles, the stock browser crashes about 20x a day and the browser's cache is unclearable.

Can't anybody help?

I have my phone here, with Settings opened to the Storage tab. Under USB Storage it says:

USB Storage:
1.62GB
Available space: 224KB
Format USB storage: Erases all data on device's USB storage, such as music and photos.

Device memory:

Available space: 596MB

Boathead, I have said on this thread that I can move NOTHING MORE to the external SD card because the internal SD card is full. So read what the problem is before offering a solution.

Please, no more replies just to say "I have a similar problem. Hope this helps." Misery doesn't love company. Please TELL ME HOW TO FIX THIS.

Here's a question I have asked and received no answer to:

"I fear that the only solution may be to restore factory settings, but how do I save my precious files and bookmarks? I have MyBackupPro and Dropbox (don't ask me why I have both, but I don't know which one will help me now so I'm not uninstalling either of them). I've tried to back up to MyBackupPro, but the big problem is music files. The backup process never completes for music, and when it stops the entire effort is wasted. Can I copy my music library to a flash drive and reinstall it on my SD card? Can I do that with ebooks too? (All my ebooks and music files are DRM-free.)"
 
I'm not familiar with your specific device, but if both internal and external sd cards are accessible from a PC when connected is USB Mass Storage mode, you might be able to move files from one to the other using the PC.
 
USB Mass Storage mode? Is that a mode like Safe mode?

So far the only mode I've been able to use is Normal (in an Internet cafe). There, depending on which cable I use, either nothing happens or the device is not recognized and an error message appears saying the device has malfunctioned.

It used to be that when I connected the device with a USB cable, the phone would show a screen inviting you to mount or unmount it (whichever). No more.

Do you think maybe I can explain my problem and ask the Internet cafe manager to run the machine in mass storage mode?
 
Mass Storage mode is where the phone dismounts the SD card from Android and exposes it to whatever PC you've hooked it up to with a USB cable.

For example, lets say you hook the exhibit up to a windows machine (xp, vista, 7, and 8 will all behave the same for this). There should be either an option that comes up on the phone screen or in the notification area saying that USB is connected., along with an option to turn on "mass storage mode". When you select that, the phone lets windows see through it directly to the SD card, as if you had put it the card in a card reader.

If, instead, you are getting options to either mount as a camera or mount as an MTP device / mode, then that's similar to mass storage mode, but still not the same. The point is to let windows (or mac, or linux, or what have you) be able to see the files on the phone.
 
I used to be able to do that. Now, depending on the cable I use, I get either:

1) absolutely no response; PC does nothing, or

2) Error message saying system doesn't recognize the "unknown device."

One of these 2 things happens whether or not the SD card in the phone is mounted.

Now what?
 
A number of things could cause this:

1.) Drivers got uninstalled on the PC side. Could be fixed or ruled out by reinstalling them.

2.) USB cable connecting the phone to the PC has gone bad. Since you have got different results depending on the cable, you can know that at least one of them is not liked by the phone.

3.) USB port on the phone has gone bad. This may or may not be fixable, you'd probably have to take it to a shop.

4.) USB port on your PC has gone bad. Try plugging it into a different port on the PC. Or, try plugging a different USB device into that same port. If that works, then the port probably is fine.

Sounds like you've got some trial and error to do.
 
Thanks everyone! Sorry not to have gotten back sooner, but I called 611 and the techie showed me how to move files from the internal SD to the external SD. I also found that the stock file manager is easier to use than either of the two third-party file managers I'd downloaded.

I still use the Amazon MP3 player a lot now that I know it uses less memory.

Again, thank you all!
 
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