I would like to go through and completely clean out my phones storage. By that I mean deleting all the old files that uninstalled apps created, empty folders, and other things that most ROMs don't bother to remove. I realize that it isn't really necessary, and why ROM makers don't really do it. I just feel compelled to do it.
For example;
At root there is the DATA folder but also a DATA_1, DATA_2, and DATA_3 folder that are just empty. Are these folders necessary? If I were to delete them and some system process needed them would they just be recreated? There are a ton of other empty folders throughout the file system that I would love to just delete.
Speaking of the DATA folder, it contains a DATA folder... It's great that all these ROMs remove the bloatware but within this secondary DATA folder sits old files related to these removed apps. Can't these be safely deleted?
The default wallpaper is easy enough to find and delete, but where are the other wallpapers that come preloaded? Seems to me like there may be a ton of little files out there that could be deleted to add up to a decent amount of space.
I supposed what I am really asking is what the best resources out there are for determining what's really necessary and what's deletable. Googling random file names only gets you so far. Heh. Maybe I should just flash a ROM and forget it, but I am just too OCD!
Delete what you will. Anything needed will be recreated. Some apps might store stuff there, but all core system data is stored on the data partition.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
/data/data is a valid partition. Also, you aren't gaining anything by deleting the stock wallpapers, etc except space that you cannot use- they lie on a reserved partition that is a set size.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD
Related
I've noticed through the course of installing/uninstalling apps over time I have a lot of junk folders sitting around in my /mnt/sdcard/ directory.
Is it safe to delete folders specific to apps in that directory?
Example: I have a /mnt/sdcard/WebMD folder sitting out there even though I uninstalled it a week ago.
Another question is what folders should I not tamper with? (data, external_sd, LOST.DIR, tmp, etc)
Thanks all
Any folder named after an app you've uninstalled you can delete. As they will only contain either setting information about the app or things that have been downloaded by that app.
Every folder under mnt/sdcard can be deleted and the phone will still function fine. No system files are stored there.
Your pictures you've taken, documents, downloads, backups (titanium backup) would all be deleted. For the most part those will be in folders named obviously (titaniumbackup, dcim).
Majority of folders that are labeled with a period in front of them, for example ".example" would contain information specific to the app "example".
If in doubt rename the folder to anything else. If a program suddenly stops working right, rename it back. No issues, feel free to delete.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App
Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks gr8hairy1
No, thank you for giving me something to do while my wife shopped.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App
hi all, i have a question regarding to the additional data that we downloaded for certain games.
to be specific, i've downloaded NOVA2 and SHADOWGUN. but i dont quite like the games so i uninstalled them from the 'Manage App' option.
but seems like those additional data are still in my phone as i checked my storage, a huge portion of space is taken up.
do we have to manually delete these additional data? if yes, how do i go about doing it?
thanks in advance.
Yeah you'd have to delete the "data" file in the sd\android\data folder.
i had that with plants vs zombies where like 50mb of additional data was downloaded.
the data usually should be in ur internal sd card sd\android\data\com.[developer name usually]
just delete that folder and you'll be set.
if there isn't such folder try doing a file search for the developer company name and there should be data files in ur phone somewhere that u can delete.
As morio134 said, it should be in android/data/[folder]
If you can't tell which one it is, you can use something like Grid Size Free File Manager[/img] so show you what takes up how much space on your phone. Really useful if you're not sure what's using up all of your storage space
also it depend on application - some games etc remove also downloaded data when removed via unistall
Game data could be stored in various locations on the sd card, including gameloft, android/data, ea and others.
Sent from my GT-I9100T
thanks all for the replies.
i'll try to check from those directories mentioned. just to confirm though, i wont be able to access those directories from the computer right?
i have to use apps like ES to navigate inside? since it looks like its internal sd directories.
So now that I have a phone with an internal SD card, I am particularly worried about data, or what would happen if I can no longer take it off of a device. Previously an SD card could just be removed from a dead device, but not so now.
I'm using foldersync to mirror data, but I was wondering what were the essential folders to sync. I can figure out most of them, but I'm struggling with the Android folder in root. Is there any valuable information in here or is it all temporary and so not required to be backed up?
sshaikh said:
So now that I have a phone with an internal SD card, I am particularly worried about data, or what would happen if I can no longer take it off of a device. Previously an SD card could just be removed from a dead device, but not so now.
I'm using foldersync to mirror data, but I was wondering what were the essential folders to sync. I can figure out most of them, but I'm struggling with the Android folder in root. Is there any valuable information in here or is it all temporary and so not required to be backed up?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you don't care about storage space and automation and you happen to use TotalCommander for PC, it has perfect "Synchronize Dirs" feature, with in my personal experience (after many tests of different solutions) wins every time due to high customisation, ease of use and option of binary comparison
You don't need to backup the Android folder. It's mostly just full of data files for certain apps. Like Google Maps saved map data, cached music from Google Music, game data, small preferences files for some apps etc. Nothing important. Even if you delete the contents of the whole Android folder, they'll be re-created on boot or when you run those apps next. Map data, Google music etc should be downloaded again manually. It's a waste of space to back it up as it can be 2GB or more sometimes. Generally, only backup your personal data like pictures, videos, music, downloads etc. Things which you've put there yourself. Also backup any folders of backup related apps like SMSBackup&Restore, Titanium Backup and recovery folder with nandroid backups. Personal files + backup app data is all you need to backup from the SD card. Everything else is insignificant and will be recreated anyway by the respective apps.
Thanks sashank, that's what I thought. It's a pain to backup because of the size and usage.
Looking at the docs however it seems apps can put whatever data they want there, including settings. So I guess this depends on the app itself and how well it behaves itself. I guess I will have to be discerning and backup individual files in the folder depending on how important the app is to me. Which sucks.
p107r0 said:
if you don't care about storage space and automation and you happen to use TotalCommander for PC, it has perfect "Synchronize Dirs" feature, with in my personal experience (after many tests of different solutions) wins every time due to high customisation, ease of use and option of binary comparison
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I'm using Foldersync to do this automatically already. I just didn't want to spend time and energy maintaining a backup of redundant cache data!
Hello,
I was browsing stuff in internal memory and I noticed a lot of folders. Excluding folders I created and apps created, wchich ones I MUST PRESERVE and cannot delete to get system running? Well, I asked because I like to keep it tidy and I guess less stuff in memory means faster phone. I use few apps that have "cleaning" options like RootAppDelete (it has Clean Junk option) and GoPowerMaster (system trash clean option). Does these clean all what is unnecessary or should I manually clean something from time to time?
Those folders could have been created by applications. If you deleted them, the folders stay there if the folders are empty and aren't system ones with a dot in front of them, you can delete them. In my opinion, the best way to clean the folders is manually
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Hey everyone. I have searched around and can't find an answer to this, so here goes;
I have a Verizon Galaxy S4 and while I love the phone and all the ROM's out for it, I HATE that due to it's limited 16GB internal memory, I am CONSTANTLY running out of space on the phone. I have moved everything I can to my SD card but still can't get it down. When I open my phone on my PC and look at the internal memory, I see a ton of folders that I don't know what the hell they are. I would love to just go through arbitrarily and delete them all but obviously that's not a great idea. Can anyone tell me and/or compile a list of files and folders that commonly end up on our phones from bloat and whatnot?
Here's a screenshot of what I see in mine, just as a for instance...
Do you have a lot of photos?
They would be in the DCIM folder
joshuabg said:
Do you have a lot of photos?
They would be in the DCIM folder
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply. There are a lot in there. Can I not move that folder to the SD card?
I only got the S4 last Saturday, and today UPS brought my 32G SD card. When I went to the camera app to see if there were any way to change the target location, a popup said (about), "You now have an SD card, so all single shots will now go there. Multi-shots will still go to the internal storage." There is indeed a setting for that though, Internal or SD. I plan to leave the DCIM folder on the Internal, but let it be empty
I Hate Import Cars said:
Hey everyone. I have searched around and can't find an answer to this, so here goes;
I have a Verizon Galaxy S4 and while I love the phone and all the ROM's out for it, I HATE that due to it's limited 16GB internal memory, I am CONSTANTLY running out of space on the phone. I have moved everything I can to my SD card but still can't get it down. When I open my phone on my PC and look at the internal memory, I see a ton of folders that I don't know what the hell they are. I would love to just go through arbitrarily and delete them all but obviously that's not a great idea. Can anyone tell me and/or compile a list of files and folders that commonly end up on our phones from bloat and whatnot?
Here's a screenshot of what I see in mine, just as a for instance...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You probably already know this...but here goes:
-By all means invest in an external sdcard. Use the sdcard to store all your pictures, video, music and any other documents you may be storing on your phone.
-There are two apps in the Play Store that enable you to "sort of" move apps to sdcard. Aparted will allow you to partition your sdcard. You create a partition that will be reserved for app data, cache and other "stuff". Link2SD is the app that will use that partition to "link" your apps to the data etc being stored on the sdcard partition. I saved about 1gb by using these two apps. This only works on your downloaded apps, not on system apps. Your apps will update and run as normal, but their associated data etc will be stored on the sdcard partition you create.
-Consider the type ROM you're running, if you have an option. Generally speaking, TW ROMs are more "heavy" than AOSP ROMS. You have to pick your poison. If you like and use all the unique features Samsung has put on the S4 (hand gestures, smart screen etc) then a AOSP ROM may not be what you want as your daily driver. Yes, it will use less resources in terms of RAM and internal storage, but some of those unique features that you like will not be available because most of the supporting firmware has been removed in an AOSP ROM. If you're forced to use SafeStrap to flash ROMs then your options are even fewer.
-There are a number of "safe to remove or freeze" list floating around on the web or in this forum. Like most things, one man's passion is another man's poison. Just because some guy says "xxxx.apk" is safe to remove or freeze doesn't mean it won't have an undesirable effect for you. Besides, you really don't save a lot of storage space by deleting most of those things. Unless it is truely "bloat" like NFL Football or Blockbuster I just freeze those things associated with functions or apps that I know I will never use. On a TW ROM that usually means most of the Samsung "stuff".
Hope this helps.
Remove Stuff
Removing all of the Samsung stuff that you dont use dose free up some space. Even with that I have found on the TW roms I can only hold 2 of them on my internal storage. Usually I have my Daily driver rom on there and any new roms that I want to try I just have to keep deleing those when I want to put a new one on.