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Help System Storage Galaxy S3 filling up!

Ok off to try app cache cleaner. Excuse my ignorance, but is rooting your phone the same as "flashing"? From what I read in the faq section, it sounds similar. Forgive me for being nervous about "rooting", considering in Australia to "root" something means to mess something up (among other things, and in crass terms! ). To put it in a sentence: "the latest upgrade possibly rooted my phone and now I need a new one." ....but I digress lol. I'll report back on how app cache cleaner went...
 
Silly me. Should have realised from the app name it wouldn't work. I'm using something else already for keeping my cache clean. My problem lies in my System Data. I tried downloading Astro File Manager, which appears to give me visibility of all files... but I'm really not sure what I'm looking for. Presumably something ginormous?
 
ninkynonk said:
Ok off to try app cache cleaner. Excuse my ignorance, but is rooting your phone the same as "flashing"? From what I read in the faq section, it sounds similar. Forgive me for being nervous about "rooting", considering in Australia to "root" something means to mess something up (among other things, and in crass terms! ). To put it in a sentence: "the latest upgrade possibly rooted my phone and now I need a new one." ....but I digress lol. I'll report back on how app cache cleaner went...
Click to expand...
Rooting just gives you the "administrative" controls that you might need to get some stuff done. Well, just access to the controls. You would still need an app that has the tools, like Storage Analyzer, which if you are rooted, can show things that the user doesn't have access to. It's a Linux/Unix thing. It's called rooting because your are substatuting your account for the "root" user, who is an administrator.

Flashing is taking a file that has been packaged in a way to install it. It's most often used to "ROM" a device. We also use it to install apps and put them in different places.

ninkynonk said:
Silly me. Should have realised from the app name it wouldn't work. I'm using something else already for keeping my cache clean. My problem lies in my System Data. I tried downloading Astro File Manager, which appears to give me visibility of all files... but I'm really not sure what I'm looking for. Presumably something ginormous?
Click to expand...

You shouldn't need to clear your cache too often. It will slow down the opening of app as they truely need to run out of the cache that they build

dsmryder said:
This might be my biggest clue. My daughter ran the battery down so I have to charge it just to boot it and check.

ninkynonk, if you are rooted you could check. If not, I would put it on my consideration list as this is one of the reasons I got into this stuff myself.
Click to expand...

On my daughter's tablet, the internal SDcard is a symlinked part of her /data partiton(sort of). Removing some oversized videos solved the problem. She is now recording at DVD resolution and knows about what happened (at 9 no less). I still recomend looking into rooting the GS3 and stuff. You can look into the "All things root" section for your perticular phone and try to assess the risk. Hell, ask me if you aren't sure. I have rooted a few different devices and am familure with the lingo.
 
Thanks for the clarification dsmryder & offer of help.

I MAY be getting somewhere. I've been snooping around in Astro File Manager and have found some folders that seem pretty darn big to me. I have no idea what they're for though. It's pretty slow going using Astro. It takes forever to scan all of the files, because there are so many of them. The one folder I still haven't managed to finish scanning is /proc. It's got as high as about 3gig, before someone calls me and it stalls scanning.

Does anyone know what a folder "proc" is for?
 
dsmryder said:
On my daughter's tablet, the internal SDcard is a symlinked part of her /data partiton(sort of).
Click to expand...

On the S3, samsung use the FUSER file system so /data and /sdcard share the same space. The 11.35 GB space on the "16 GB" S3 is made up of both.
 
Its not part of the /sdcard /data FUSER so this shouldnt be taken into account by disk usage.

I don't know how big it should be but its not relevant. You don't want to be looking anywhere outside of /data or /sdcard
 
Arrg. I'm lost. Not really sure what to look for. Believe me, I wouldn't go deleting anything random. Maybe rooting is my only choice.

In the meantime, I reset again and created a new Gmail account to use Googleplay, on the off chance there's something kooky going on there. We'll see...
 
I think rooting and checking each folder in /data individually may be the only way.

Or maybe factory reset then flash latest stock android to truly give factory settings
 
I think you're right. This morning I have nearly 5 gig in my system data since the reset I did before bed. This is despite creating a whole new Google log in, on the off chance something weird was being fed to me from them. I guess that is ruled out now and goes along with the fact I don't have an excessive data download.

Off to learn how to root...
 
Hello ninkynonk
Have you found a solution? I have the exact same problem! The free memory starts decreasing and within a weeks time I have no memory left. No additional apps where installed though :(

Please let me know...
 
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