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Hi everyone,
I just updated my Aria to FR007 and really want to have a 'brand new' phone look + feel.
I would like to delete ALL unnecessary files in the SD card & phone memory cos at the moment, I feel like something is not amiss.
I only have 574mb left out of the stock 2gb SD card. And my internal phone storage have only 132mb available space left.
I would like to save only my nandroid backup in the SDcard and nothing else. So deleting all other datas like saved apps, games, contacts, images, music and others are fine.
Please advice what procedure I need to follow as I am not familiar with what files are safe to delete. Is it safe to just do this:
Settings > SD & Phone Storage >Factory Data Reset ?
Thank you for your advice!
I would like to know this as well because out of a 8GB SD card (7.59GB) i only have 549MB remaining and i only have 1 nandroid back up and 3 GB of music on the phone.
That's a loaded question dependant upon what apps are installed. Many apps create folders and populate the sd card in some form.
Best I can tell you, mount the storage and copy the sd content to your computer. Erase the sdcard content and see what happens after reboot. Should only potentially bother 3rd party apps.
Sent from my Liberty using XDA App
Thanks for the advice BelacNongaw.
I thought about that too but I was thinking maybe there are some system files or essential files that MUST be in the SD card. And also, wouldn't deleting everything in the SD card also delete my nandroid backup? And Clockwork? <-They do reside in the SD card, yes?
Let me reiterate please: I want a 'brand new' phone while keeping only my last nandroid backup Will a factory reset do?
Thanks again everyone!
I had the same problem and the only thing I noticed was nandroid backups take a lot of space and also apps that have been deleted keep their folders in the sd card
Sent from my HTC Liberty using XDA App
Okay this is what I did:
1. Back up my SDcard to the computer (plug it in, mount as disk drive, copy all contents to a folder on the desktop).
2. Restart the Aria in Recovery mode (Vol. down while Power up)
3. Go to Recovery > Partitions > Format SD Card
Now I have 1.84gb of SD storage with these folders (viewed in Astro):
1. .footprints / thumbnails / voices
2. LOST.DIR
3. tmp / .astro / astro
Haven't tested everything yet but eBuddy and Market are doing well, downloading and app installation are running fine too.
Now I'm quite concerned about the following:
1. Does this mean that I do not have clockwork anymore? Because there was a 'clockworkmod' folder in the SDcard before I formatted it.
2. Am I screwed?
Thank you for any suggestions/advice. I hope this thread can offer some helpful tips to those who need it in the future.
You are fine. The clockworkmod folder is where rom manager downloads and your nandroid backups are stored. You can just copy it back or rom manager will generate it again next time you nandroid backup.
Sent from my Liberty using XDA App
Thanks for reminding me BelacNongaw.
I just made a nandroid backup of my bare minimum Aria, and it automaticall created a clockworkmod folder in the SDcard with the md5 file.
Anyways, it's great to have all these space now
Great post guys I was wondering this myself. I recently rooted my inspire 4g to factory restore but all 3rd party apps are still on the sd card and i have no intention of re-installing any of them so i am looking for a safe way to delete unnessesary folders without deleting the vital ones, ill give your suggestions a try.
Technically you can safely delete everything that's on the sd card. Android will automatically create whatever folders it needs. Of course you'll lose any data saved to the sd, but you wont mess up your phone at all.
Sent from my cm7 Aria.
i have a g2 but i have the same thoughts i want the space back from sd card not worried about loosing any thing just dont want to mess the phone up
Don't worry. SD card is totally an external of the phone. Delete everything, it doesn't matter. And backup your needed files to any place you like. You can move them back to your reformatted SD card whenever you like.
So, I was looking at my SD Card info through settings and I only have 2.43gb free. I only have 7 songs, not many photos, videos or anything else. I went through my SD and cleaned it up, but nothing changed.
I am running SC 2.5v no theme, and nothing really on my SD card for roms, themes or anything like that. I know this is a stretch, but what could be taking so much memory on the SD. I don't have titanium, i have cleaned my back ups and don't back up my apps... I know. Crazy. Anyone have any ideas. I know you don't know what is on my SD but, anyone have this issue as well?
gotsflat4love said:
So, I was looking at my SD Card info through settings and I only have 2.43gb free. I only have 7 songs, not many photos, videos or anything else. I went through my SD and cleaned it up, but nothing changed.
I am running SC 2.5v no theme, and nothing really on my SD card for roms, themes or anything like that. I know this is a stretch, but what could be taking so much memory on the SD. I don't have titanium, i have cleaned my back ups and don't back up my apps... I know. Crazy. Anyone have any ideas. I know you don't know what is on my SD but, anyone have this issue as well?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you partition your sd card?
Sent From My CM 7 Nightly #7 (Mixer theme) Monster Evo.
No. Should I? I have never ran across anyone doing that on a Fascinate...
gotsflat4love said:
No. Should I? I have never ran across anyone doing that on a Fascinate...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That could probably explain why.
Sent From My CM 7 Nightly #7 (Mixer theme) Monster Evo.
Mount the SD card on your computer and then select all the files in explorer (turn on show system files and hidden files first!), and check their total size (size and size on disk). If the size on disk for all the files is far lower than the amount reported as being used for the volume, something odd is probably up.
If the 'size on disk' is actually about the same as the amount of used space on the volume, you can then start checking the folders/files to see what's taking up the space.
@Jason Black: Why'd you want to repartition it? Or did you mean reformat it?
Another thing you could do is look for hidden files on windows when u open up removable drive then on the upper the upper left hand side hit tools then view then scroll down and hit the bubble that says show hidden files and see if thats what's taking up space
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
KitsuneKnight said:
Mount the SD card on your computer and then select all the files in explorer (turn on show system files and hidden files first!), and check their total size (size and size on disk). If the size on disk for all the files is far lower than the amount reported as being used for the volume, something odd is probably up.
If the 'size on disk' is actually about the same as the amount of used space on the volume, you can then start checking the folders/files to see what's taking up the space.
@Jason Black: Why'd you want to repartition it? Or did you mean reformat it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Non of that. I was simply asking of the sd card was partitioned.
Sent From My CM 7 Nightly #7 (Mixer theme) Monster Evo.
Do you use ROM Manager, or have you used it? Also, do you have/use Titanium backup to create backups or have you done any nandroid backups in CWM? Also, if you download things on your phone, that would be another thing to check and clear out.
imnuts said:
Do you use ROM Manager, or have you used it? Also, do you have/use Titanium backup to create backups or have you done any nandroid backups in CWM? Also, if you download things on your phone, that would be another thing to check and clear out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This
Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk
imnuts said:
Do you use ROM Manager, or have you used it? Also, do you have/use Titanium backup to create backups or have you done any nandroid backups in CWM? Also, if you download things on your phone, that would be another thing to check and clear out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah you can try clearing download cache in rom manager and also, those nanbackups take up a good amount of space if you have a lot of apps and data. I also have 2.40g left. Thats a lot of space unless you are downloading movies lol.
Sent From My CM 7 Nightly #7 (Mixer theme) Monster Evo.
I recently had that issue and went through my sd card and deleted unnecessary files. Old Roms such as superclean 2.1-2.3 I found in multiple places each taking up about 150MB. The main culprit was the nandroid backups. I had 4 backups each took up about a gig. They were in the clockwork mod folder. Im now limiting myself to 1 backup at a time.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
I had a lot of lost space on my card a while back. I suspect from removing the card/inserting the card while still mounted and losing clusters.
I simply put the card in my PC. Backed it up to my hard disk (hidden files and all). Formatted the card. Copied the files back. This restored the lost space. (and gave me a backup too which is handy)
Thanks everyone for the replies. I only have 3 nandroid back ups so far. I have rom manager, but the one adrynalyne posted with fix permissions. I have titanium, but dont use it.
I will mount my SD card to my comp and take a look at it. See if I can find hidden files.
Ok. I figures it out. I use a PC for rooting purpose stuff, but put a bunch of files on my SD card from a mac. Well I found out that when you delete files on your sd card from a mac.
It creats a hidden folder call .trash where it stores everything you delete. I used stock "My Files" hit menu when open, click more, setting then select show hidden files. You can delete all .trash or whatever .(folder) there. That is the hidden files mac create.
I hope this can help someone. Once i deleted those folders, I wernt from 1.8gb to 12.58 gb.
gotsflat4love said:
Ok. I figures it out. I use a PC for rooting purpose stuff, but put a bunch of files on my SD card from a mac. Well I found out that when you delete files on your sd card from a mac.
It creats a hidden folder call .trash where it stores everything you delete. I used stock "My Files" hit menu when open, click more, setting then select show hidden files. You can delete all .trash or whatever .(folder) there. That is the hidden files mac create.
I hope this can help someone. Once i deleted those folders, I wernt from 1.8gb to 12.58 gb.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Macs also create other dot files when coping data, including a dot file for every file you copy over (it's to store the file's metadata... that's really not useful), as well as some others. Some poster around here has a link in his sig with a 'guide' on disabling those things...
In my /sdcard/clockworkmod/backup folder i have 9 backups. I'm guessing I might want to keep the oldest one in case it has a backup of my stock phone (I'm rooted now) and the latest one. The rest can be deleted, right?
Zacisblack said:
I recently had that issue and went through my sd card and deleted unnecessary files. Old Roms such as superclean 2.1-2.3 I found in multiple places each taking up about 150MB. The main culprit was the nandroid backups. I had 4 backups each took up about a gig. They were in the clockwork mod folder. Im now limiting myself to 1 backup at a time.
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
eibbed0001 said:
In my /sdcard/clockworkmod/backup folder i have 9 backups. I'm guessing I might want to keep the oldest one in case it has a backup of my stock phone (I'm rooted now) and the latest one. The rest can be deleted, right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
TBH I haven't made a back-up since december 2010 and have deleted all mine long ago. With odin/TiBkup I find it to be an error free process. Restores always seem to have their own issues so I just gave up on them. But yes you can delete all older ones and keep the most current.
good day.
^^ same here. Haven't done a nandroid since November. Nandroid backups are a pain. It only takes like 10 minutes to get all your settings back the way you want them after a good ol' clean odin. Plus titanium backup, of course
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA Premium App
Agreed. Delete all your old backups. I had about 10 on mine at one pint. They eat about 1gb each
I've been KANGBANGED!!!!!
I've done a Nandroid restore a couple of times now and it went smoothly. A couple of cache and Dcache clears before, wipe data, clear caches again, install ROM, clear caches a couple of times, boot to make sure the ROM functions, then recovery, cache clearing, then advanced restore and restoring just data works for me. I used to use TiBu to restore everything but this has been working out fine, although I'd heard some people had problems with it. Although now that I think about it, I've only done this when re-flashing the same ROM as before. Maybe with different ROMS some things don't play nicely.
Still, I don't need 9 backups just sitting there taking up space, so thanks for the go ahead on deleting them. And I still do TiBu and MyBu backups because I've found you can never have too many resources when things go bad!
Hy guys, there is something I dont understand about nandroid. I flashed my rom, kernel, downloaded apps, change setting, homescreen etc. and now i would like to back it up exactly as it is. I read that nandroid is best for that but it doesnt backup sd card? whats up with that. I look at my sd card with root explorer and there are many folder and files that were made by apps when they were insteled on the phone.Does it backup that also? Also i have many apps, apps2sd, will it make backup of them also?
It won't back up your entire phone onto your phone. It would get really big with all the music, videos, etc, that a person might have. If you have your external card mounted then you can attach via a USB cable to your computer then either with adb or with a file manager copy all of /mnt/sdcard youlle get the important things that nandroid does not. The exception I can think of is that it doesn't seem to back up your modem firmware, so if your partial to a particular one then just have it as a flashable file.
Ok, thanks, so it doesnt backup internal sd card because someone told me yesterday that it does? If i copy the entire sd card to PC and latter copy it back to mobile like that will it work. First i recover nandroid backup, than i format internal sd card and than copy all the files back to sd card.
A Nandroid backup will copy a lot, but it can't copy everything or there wouldn't be room on the device for it to be practical. It is quite supprising how much it will keep; it just isn't a complete backup solution is all.
Addressing your question though, as for copying the entire sd card, you really only need to copy the folder /mnt/sdcard or /sdcard ; the latter is a symlink to /mnt/sdcard
If you try to copy your entire sdcard then it is possible to end up with data from partitions that will take forever to copy and that you really don't want, for example /proc on the phone is just kernel information that doesn't even exist when the phone is turned off. To keep things simple, everything is part of the ROM and kernel except for /mnt/sdcard and in the case of and external sd card, /mnt/sdcard/external_sd but the latter (/mnt/sdcard/external_sd) will be copied along with the first one provided it is mounted when you do it.
The only other exception to what needs to be backed up is a partition called /efs and there are various tutorials with various methods about how to do that. I would follow one of them rather than just copying the data out as its a partition that holds unique information about the phone that it can't function with if it gets messed up. This is more immediately important and I think there's quite simply some apps that will do it for you if you look at the sticky threads here. The files will be on your phone though so you'lle want to pull them off on to your computer for sure.
As for your friend's advice, though, you won't typically ever need more than a Nandroid backup unless something happens to that other data, for example if there's filesystem corruption. If you do a restore of your ROM then it still retains all your music and photo goodies or whatever, app settings get wiped though where they are retained with Nandroid. The only thing that I'd worry about is if the impending update to Ice Cream Sandwhich somehow wipes suff, or if you play around at the command line a lot make a mistake unintentionally. If it weren't for the updates and beta ICS releases we're seeing then I'd simply be telling you not to worry about it, but to back things up and be done with it.
By the way, doesn't Kies back things up? I don't have it so I don't remember but it seems like that's how I initially got things onto it and that it has a sync option. Perhaps this is enough?....
Igor 3 said:
Hy guys, there is something I dont understand about nandroid. I flashed my rom, kernel, downloaded apps, change setting, homescreen etc. and now i would like to back it up exactly as it is. I read that nandroid is best for that but it doesnt backup sd card? whats up with that. I look at my sd card with root explorer and there are many folder and files that were made by apps when they were insteled on the phone.Does it backup that also? Also i have many apps, apps2sd, will it make backup of them also?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Man just do the backup and don't worry about the sd card files/folders. The reason it doesn't back them up is because they stay there anyway. Eg, if you uninstall an app, a folder that was created by it on your sd card is still there. Flashing firmware, including wipe versions doesn't touch the 11.5gb internal storage or external storage.
BTW, most of my internal sd card is used up and 25gb is used up on my external card. If the backup was to include those a 64gb memory card wouldn't be enough.
Between the S1 and S2 I've backed up and restored over 100 times, including after fully wiping the phone (but not formatting sd cards) and the phone always looks and functions exactly as before, including apps.
So, only copy memory card files to PC if you intend to format the internal / external cards or if you are worried you might lose stuff if the memories become corrupted.
Sent from my GT-I9100T
Thanks guys for you help. I dont use Kies also so i dont know and, yes, i format sd card before flashing every rom so i would probably format it also before making restore of nandroid backup. Also when i delete some app a delete a folder created by it on sd card. OK, than i will make a nandroid backup and copy mnt/sdcard on PC so if it ever gets corupted i can restore everything. As for efs folder, Neak kerenl made a backup of that automatic so i just made a copy of that on PC.
Every so often I go though the folders on the sd cards and clean them up a little but I have never formatted the sd cards. I don't really think you should do it with every flash.
Sent from my GT-I9100T
Hi, is there anyway to backup apps so that i dont lose save files? (so i dont have to restart from the beginning of the game each time)
It'd be best if there was some way to move apps + their saves files to the external SD card (also is it necessary to format extSD card before flashing ROMs that need full wipe?)
I heard titanium backup might be able to do this, but if i full wipe my internal sd card titanium back up + backup file also gets deleted.
Thanks.
Skere said:
Hi, is there anyway to backup apps so that i dont lose save files? (so i dont have to restart from the beginning of the game each time)
It'd be best if there was some way to move apps + their saves files to the external SD card (also is it necessary to format extSD card before flashing ROMs that need full wipe?)
I heard titanium backup might be able to do this, but if i full wipe my internal sd card titanium back up + backup file also gets deleted.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In titanium backup preferneces move the backup folder to external card.
kevinarjun said:
In titanium backup preferneces move the backup folder to external card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does titanium backup also restore save files and settings?
It backups and restores the application data storage.
If an app stores it's saves or some content on the sdcard, then that particular conten is not stored since it technically does not belong to the app and thus Titanium has no way of knowing what to backup.
I can however recommend for savegames etc to sync those folders on the sdcard with Dropbox. Not only will you have an offsite backup but it also includes the history of the last 30 or 90 days so if you f%#@ up ingame you can restore your old save.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
d4fseeker said:
It backups and restores the application data storage.
If an app stores it's saves or some content on the sdcard, then that particular conten is not stored since it technically does not belong to the app and thus Titanium has no way of knowing what to backup.
I can however recommend for savegames etc to sync those folders on the sdcard with Dropbox. Not only will you have an offsite backup but it also includes the history of the last 30 or 90 days so if you f%#@ up ingame you can restore your old save.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which folders do I backup? does drop also back up the app itself
Back up everything just in case, it's there for if you ever need it.
Luckily I can help you as I made the mistake last night of restoring system data.
First of all back up EVERYTHING and place it in your external SD card if you wish.
When you've wiped the phone download Titanium Backup again and restore "missing apps + data" just the missing apps and data. Do NOT restore the system files, it will result in everything to stop functioning.
Hey all,
So over the years, I've copied all of my data from phone to phone to my SD Card, mostly to save pictures and videos, but sometimes to also save phone backups and stuff. At this point, I have Gigs of stuff I can get rid of, but I don't want to frak anythign up. Anyone got any suggestions, or is my proposed try the best one?
Here's what I plan to do:
1. Do a backup of my apps and settings like I would do in Titanum Backup.
2. Copy the app backups and any pics/videos I want to a safe place.
3. Reformat SDCard
4. Restore pics and app backup.
Is there something better for this, or something that runs inside of the OS, like an app from the Market, or is this probably the best solution? I obviously don't want to hose any of my apps, but I need to clean up this card.
THanks,
Mike
this is good. everything will work fine.
some applications have their data in sd card. don't know whether TB will backup them or not.
RavinduSha said:
this is good. everything will work fine.
some applications have their data in sd card. don't know whether TB will backup them or not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool, thanks for the tip, just didn't want someone to point out something that I would have missed that would end up hosing my phone.