[Q] Free up space on device - HTC Droid DNA

I am in need of freeing up space on my device. Out of the 16Gb I only have 2.xGb available now. I do have at least 2 backups on my phone, and 2 helium backups. Looking at the math, they should not take up that much room:
Stock.zip 1.7G
slim.zip 1.6G
Helium1 642MB
Helium2 733MB
= 4.65G
So that really doesn't make any sense to me. I reviewed my apps and I had a lot of google play cached, but I deleted all of that data through app management. So I can't figure what is taking up all of this space.
1. if I delete my backups from the device, which I have transferred to my computer, and then paste them back in, will they work? Will they work if I format the phone?
2. In reality I would have no problem formatting the phone to wipe everything and flash a rom again via OTG cable through CWM. However, I am at a loss as to what selection(s) in CWM I make to fix my problem.

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1) there is actually only 11-12G actually available to the user, on all DNA's, on all ROMs
2) you can move back ups around. i keep a copy of mine in dropbox and on my computer, but never on my phone.
3) you have to have apps, app cache, music, pics, ect to have such little space. you need to look at your /data partition and your /sdcard partition when calculating space.
4) wth is helium?

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Helium used to be carbon backup. But I'll look at my directories and review the space used
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 4 Beta
Ok. So I was able to free up a bunch of space and removed a single backup, leaving stock.zip on board in case of crashing and need of assistance with Verizon though 99% unlikely to happen. I was having major issues finding where helium stored its data because it is blocked from the user. But luckily the Storage option in >Settings>Storage in slimbean is much greater in depth than I'm used to. So I was able to detect where a lot of my data was coming from which was various sources, but some were helium/Carbon, and also old DL files of CM that were sitting around.
But for the sake of knowing, If I did want to wipe everything through CWM and format, would I choose everything? or just a single option.

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rockfreak101 said:
Helium used to be carbon backup. But I'll look at my directories and review the space used
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 4 Beta
Ok. So I was able to free up a bunch of space and removed a single backup, leaving stock.zip on board in case of crashing and need of assistance with Verizon though 99% unlikely to happen. I was having major issues finding where helium stored its data because it is blocked from the user. But luckily the Storage option in >Settings>Storage in slimbean is much greater in depth than I'm used to. So I was able to detect where a lot of my data was coming from which was various sources, but some were helium/Carbon, and also old DL files of CM that were sitting around.
But for the sake of knowing, If I did want to wipe everything through CWM and format, would I choose everything? or just a single option.
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well its been a while since i've used CMW, and im on TWRP. but it depends on how far down you want to format. if you want to just do a regular wipe, and reload a new rom then the usual wipe is your /system, /data, /cache, /dalvik, and /boot. im not sure what CWM calls them, but those are the usual partitions. just make sure you have a new rom ready or a backup. if you wanted to reformat even FURTHER than that, you could flash the stock rocovery and do a fac reset. but thats only if you are have major issue across all roms.

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OK. Thanks for the response. I'm going to research why so many people tend to prefer twrp now.
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 4 Beta

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rockfreak101 said:
OK. Thanks for the response. I'm going to research why so many people tend to prefer twrp now.
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 4 Beta
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i think one of the main factors was that it works with some ROMs OTA functions, especially Viper roms, which are very popular. myself, i just wanted to try it out lol

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rockfreak101 said:
OK. Thanks for the response. I'm going to research why so many people tend to prefer twrp now.
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 4 Beta
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If u came from a Rom that was on 4.1.1 or 4.1.2 to a Rom that is 4.2.2 then check the /sdcard directory.. not sdcard0. I think its also in data/media. Not sdcard/data/media but striaght data/media. Use a root file manager and if u still have files in there, then delete everything except the 0/ folder. Happened to me a couple times and I freed up around 2-4 gb everytime
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using xda premium

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firespitta said:
If u came from a Rom that was on 4.1.1 or 4.1.2 to a Rom that is 4.2.2 then check the /sdcard directory.. not sdcard0. I think its also in data/media. Not sdcard/data/media but striaght data/media. Use a root file manager and if u still have files in there, then delete everything except the 0/ folder. Happened to me a couple times and I freed up around 2-4 gb everytime
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using xda premium
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I looked into that and saw what you were referring to. My only concern is that data/media is where my stock.zip recovery is saved. I'm not sure if I'm quite ready to remove that from my device yet. Also, do I need any of the CWM stuff found in data/media still? I am not referring to data/media/0.

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rockfreak101 said:
I looked into that and saw what you were referring to. My only concern is that data/media is where my stock.zip recovery is saved. I'm not sure if I'm quite ready to remove that from my device yet. Also, do I need any of the CWM stuff found in data/media still? I am not referring to data/media/0.
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Update: I'm glad I checked. I performed a backup of my current rom and CWM placed it in /data/media/clockworkmod. So this is an active directory that CWM is using for my backups. So I don't believe I'll be deleting the /data/media/clockworkmod directory. But will then anything else be impacted if deleted?

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rockfreak101 said:
Update: I'm glad I checked. I performed a backup of my current rom and CWM placed it in /data/media/clockworkmod. So this is an active directory that CWM is using for my backups. So I don't believe I'll be deleting the /data/media/clockworkmod directory. But will then anything else be impacted if deleted?
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Oh if you still have your backups there then dont delete that cwm folder.. but try and delete anything else that seems useless. What Rom are you on now?
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using xda premium

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firespitta said:
Oh if you still have your backups there then dont delete that cwm folder.. but try and delete anything else that seems useless. What Rom are you on now?
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using xda premium
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On slimbean. The remaining 4.1 files are from stock. All roms i have used are 4.2.
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 4 Beta

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rockfreak101 said:
On slimbean. The remaining 4.1 files are from stock. All roms i have used are 4.2.
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 4 Beta
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Alright I'm pretty sure its the data/media/android folder that has a pretty good chunk of memory. Try and delete that. It wont mess up your current setup because your android folder is on the sdcard 0
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using xda premium
---------- Post added at 03:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:22 PM ----------
Also if you took pictures, downloaded stuff, or have music when you were on stock, then dont touch folders like dcim, download, music, pictures, ect. I personally move all my files when I switch between 4.1 to 4.2 fro. Sdcard to sdcard0. If you want to do that use a computer to make sure it transfered right because I used es filemanager once and it said it transfered but instead all of it was lost. I think someone made a .zip file that could transfer everything but I can't remember
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using xda premium

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firespitta said:
Alright I'm pretty sure its the data/media/android folder that has a pretty good chunk of memory. Try and delete that. It wont mess up your current setup because your android folder is on the sdcard 0
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using xda premium
---------- Post added at 03:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:22 PM ----------
Also if you took pictures, downloaded stuff, or have music when you were on stock, then dont touch folders like dcim, download, music, pictures, ect. I personally move all my files when I switch between 4.1 to 4.2 fro. Sdcard to sdcard0. If you want to do that use a computer to make sure it transfered right because I used es filemanager once and it said it transfered but instead all of it was lost. I think someone made a .zip file that could transfer everything but I can't remember
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using xda premium
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Click to collapse
Sounds good. In regards to the pictures. I believe you posted about that somewhere else before, or someone else did. I saw the issues. I use dropbox and don't have any music on my device other than google music cache. So I cleared a lot of that stuff up. thanks for your help.