"Unnecessary data" keeps growing, storage full

[lbrooks101]

Hi

First, just wanted to know if this was normal storage figures as the maths don't seem to add up, and then wanted to know if 10MB every few minutes of "unnecessary data" normal?

Here is what I see under Storage - is this what you would expect to be the total space available? It's a 16GB Samsung J7.

System/user data: 13.7GB
Unnecessary data: 0MB
Available space: 2.3GB

Docs 9.46MB
Images 30.1MB
Audio 0
Videos 0
Applications 4.1GB

If I go to Storage it tells me there is unnecessary data. I clean it. It comes back after a few minutes. Is that also normal?

I have tried SD Maid and that only deleted a few KB.
I tried a "wipe cache partition" which did nothing.
I've uninstalled all the apps I don't use.
The biggest app I have is Spotify 3GB.

Thanks
Thank you in advance.

 

[Hadron]

I've never seen "unnecessary data" in any of my devices' settings, even my Samsung tablet. This must be a label Samsung have invented since then.

Anyway if it refers to app caches then those will refill as the apps are used. You could test that by picking something with a large cache (browsers and social media apps often build large caches up), clearing that and seeing whether it reduces the "unnecessary data". But if it is caches then yes, they will refill as you use the phone.

As for "is that normal", it's annoying that it merges user and system data together, but I can see you have 4.1GB of apps installed so that leaves 9.6 GB for system partitions, system app data, and possibly user app data (depends on whether it counts that with the apps or not). I don't know the J7, but it's been common for a long time for Samsung to use about 10GB for the system partitions (the 16GB S4 would have about 6 GB free out of the box), so I can believe this is all normal, even though I can't confirm for sure.

 

[lbrooks101]

Thank you very much - a useful reply that made sense to my layman ears. Yes it would be good to see user and system data split, but I hadn't realised 10GB is for the partitions (hadn't even known about partitions before today!). With Spotify's size that is half my storage gone. Really should have got the 32GB... Thanks once again.

I've never seen "unnecessary data" in any of my devices' settings, even my Samsung tablet. This must be a label Samsung have invented since then.

Anyway if it refers to app caches then those will refill as the apps are used. You could test that by picking something with a large cache (browsers and social media apps often build large caches up), clearing that and seeing whether it reduces the "unnecessary data". But if it is caches then yes, they will refill as you use the phone.

As for "is that normal", it's annoying that it merges user and system data together, but I can see you have 4.1GB of apps installed so that leaves 9.6 GB for system partitions, system app data, and possibly user app data (depends on whether it counts that with the apps or not). I don't know the J7, but it's been common for a long time for Samsung to use about 10GB for the system partitions (the 16GB S4 would have about 6 GB free out of the box), so I can believe this is all normal, even though I can't confirm for sure.