Greetings!
I recently received a replacement refurbished Nexus 4 from my carrier. All went well until I discovered some rather disturbing images that I did not care to see. Now these images were not listed in the gallery app or folder structure by any means. I discovered them by trying to change my wallpaper by Long pressing the home screen and selecting "Pick Image" and it would bring up this browser window. Said images showed up under "Recent" section. So I figured, ehhh the phone must have not been factory wiped the way it should have. Did a factory wipe through settings. They still showed up under this "Recent" section after the reset. Upon further investigation, they seemed to somehow link to Google Drive. While I was sure I did not have these images in my drive, I was concerned. Anyhow I selected one of these images and checked its info, it has modify dates of earlier this year, under permissions and activity it showed another individuals name / email address. Weird Some of these file seemed to have a naming scheme, so I did a search in the Google Drive App and found tons of junk. All which have the same owners name under it.
So LOLLIPOP for nexus 4 released today and I went ahead and flashed it hoping it would clear this junk/cache out? Nope.
I decided to open up the wallpaper browser thing before even mapping MY DRIVE and sure enough this garbage is still showing up.
I even went as far as removing ALL FILES from my Google drive on the desktop to ensure this junk was not on my drive. Still shows up.
I suspect that there is some kind of cache stored on the internal storage that is not touched when flashing a new Image.
Anyone have some suggestions on how to clean this thing out?
Related
About a month ago I was transferring files to/from my Amaze 4G, and then I disconnected it from my computer (without clicking "Eject" in Windows or disabling USB storage in Android) and after that, every time I would open an album, a few photos would disappear. A dozen here, 20 there, until my >1000 photos (carried over from previous phones) were GONE.
I removed the memory card and put it in my computer, and used an un-delete program to retrieve them intact and unharmed. I guess the file table got corrupted or something. I did a factory reset on my phone, reformatted the SD card, put all my files back, and went on my merry way.
Just a few minutes ago, I was copying all of my photos from the phone. I made sure the click "eject hardware" in Windows, and then selected "Charge Only" on the phone, disconnected it, and then, just to make sure it re-mounted properly in Android, I un-mounted and re-mounted the card via the settings page. When I open up the Album app (Which was presumably running in the background during this whole operation), several hundred photos are missing.
I plugged the phone back in, deleted the photo directories, and reloaded them from the backup on my laptop, making sure that the Albums app was closed. I then re-opened the Album app after properly disconnecting the phone, and about 600 photos were still missing. I closed the app and reopened it, and only a couple hundred were missing. I went back to the album list and then re-opened the camera album, and fewer photos were missing. Wash, rinse, and repeat, until all of the photos had reappeared.
This whole ordeal has left me concerned about the safety of my files. Ever since the first one I have often opened and re-opened the photo album to see if the number of photos decreases each time I open it, and I've had no issues other than the ones mentioned.
Any ideas on a cause/prevention for this issue?
AllanJH said:
About a month ago I was transferring files to/from my Amaze 4G, and then I disconnected it from my computer (without clicking "Eject" in Windows or disabling USB storage in Android) and after that, every time I would open an album, a few photos would disappear. A dozen here, 20 there, until my >1000 photos (carried over from previous phones) were GONE.
I removed the memory card and put it in my computer, and used an un-delete program to retrieve them intact and unharmed. I guess the file table got corrupted or something. I did a factory reset on my phone, reformatted the SD card, put all my files back, and went on my merry way.
Just a few minutes ago, I was copying all of my photos from the phone. I made sure the click "eject hardware" in Windows, and then selected "Charge Only" on the phone, disconnected it, and then, just to make sure it re-mounted properly in Android, I un-mounted and re-mounted the card via the settings page. When I open up the Album app (Which was presumably running in the background during this whole operation), several hundred photos are missing.
I plugged the phone back in, deleted the photo directories, and reloaded them from the backup on my laptop, making sure that the Albums app was closed. I then re-opened the Album app after properly disconnecting the phone, and about 600 photos were still missing. I closed the app and reopened it, and only a couple hundred were missing. I went back to the album list and then re-opened the camera album, and fewer photos were missing. Wash, rinse, and repeat, until all of the photos had reappeared.
This whole ordeal has left me concerned about the safety of my files. Ever since the first one I have often opened and re-opened the photo album to see if the number of photos decreases each time I open it, and I've had no issues other than the ones mentioned.
Any ideas on a cause/prevention for this issue?
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Maybe the album software wasn't given enough time to create all the thumb pics it uses for browsing for the 1000+ pictures you just added? It would take even longer if you had vids in there too.
johnk1973 said:
Maybe the album software wasn't given enough time to create all the thumb pics it uses for browsing for the 1000+ pictures you just added? It would take even longer if you had vids in there too.
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Click to collapse
That would explain the second incident, but in the first one, the photos were actually deleted; when I used an undelete program they showed up as "_mage_210" and the like.
AllanJH said:
That would explain the second incident, but in the first one, the photos were actually deleted; when I used an undelete program they showed up as "_mage_210" and the like.
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A corrupt mem card is all i can suggest.
johnk1973 said:
A corrupt mem card is all i can suggest.
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It has happened now with two different cards, one of which I'd been using for about a year with no problems, the other straight out of the package.
AllanJH said:
It has happened now with two different cards, one of which I'd been using for about a year with no problems, the other straight out of the package.
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Do you have a different computer or laptop to recreate the issue so you can eliminate the computer variable?
nguyendqh said:
Do you have a different computer or laptop to recreate the issue so you can eliminate the computer variable?
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Not in a usable state. However, I've had no problems with drive/card corruption from my computer.
Failing the faulty computer, do you think the phone is faulty, and should be replaced?
AllanJH said:
Not in a usable state. However, I've had no problems with drive/card corruption from my computer.
Failing the faulty computer, do you think the phone is faulty, and should be replaced?
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If you can eliminate the computer as a variable then yes I'd assume the phone has a defect.
You've already said you tried two different microSD cards. One new and one old.
So that variable has been eliminated.
Only two left to go. One you can do with relative ease at a friends or even a internet cafe.
The other requires waiting for a replacement.
I would try and isolate the issue to one element first before I sent off for a new phone.
In any case if you'd rather just send off for a new one and be done with it then go for it.
Just make sure you test the new one and see if the problem persists.
Good luck.
nguyendqh said:
If you can eliminate the computer as a variable then yes I'd assume the phone has a defect.
You've already said you tried two different microSD cards. One new and one old.
So that variable has been eliminated.
Only two left to go. One you can do with relative ease at a friends or even a internet cafe.
The other requires waiting for a replacement.
I would try and isolate the issue to one element first before I sent off for a new phone.
In any case if you'd rather just send off for a new one and be done with it then go for it.
Just make sure you test the new one and see if the problem persists.
Good luck.
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Thanks for the suggestions!
This problem seems to not happen if I make sure to kill the HTC/Android Albums app before connecting the phone to the computer, so it's usable for the time being. Once I go into the next payment cycle (I used up all my high-speed data, and I don't want to attempt a reload on 2G) I'll take it into the store and see if they'll swap it out, just to be safe.
So no-one else has had this problem?
I have an HTC Sensation running CM10. The very day I installed the CM10 ROM this problem started, I get an error saying " Storage space running out. Some functions may not work". I can clear the data and everything works fine until the next time it happens. Some days it happens 2 or 3 times a day. As far as I can tell, this is not a common problem.
The only thing I can think is that it may have something to do with my BackCountry Navigator app. It has lots of aerial photographs. I suspect that it is trying to catalog them all. But, 700MB seems excessive. I have been trying to locate this large file or files to see analyze the data, but I'm not sure where they are located.
Anyone willing to help me tackle this problem?
utmatt20 said:
I have an HTC Sensation running CM10. The very day I installed the CM10 ROM this problem started, I get an error saying " Storage space running out. Some functions may not work". I can clear the data and everything works fine until the next time it happens. Some days it happens 2 or 3 times a day. As far as I can tell, this is not a common problem.
The only thing I can think is that it may have something to do with my BackCountry Navigator app. It has lots of aerial photographs. I suspect that it is trying to catalog them all. But, 700MB seems excessive. I have been trying to locate this large file or files to see analyze the data, but I'm not sure where they are located.
Anyone willing to help me tackle this problem?
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Click to collapse
If you figure the average picture is approximately 1MB in size, and ariel photographs are usually very detailed most likey 2MB (Or greater in some cases) it's not unrealistic for 350-700+ pictures to be cached by the app as you use it to navigate and view maps. Even navigating a small area with that level of detailed images will occur a large size cache quickly, which is likely why it sometimes fills up 2-3 times a day. I would recommend going into system settings, then application manager, and locating BackCountry Navigator then clear the apps cache. Also check the apps settings and see if it has any options for disabling image caching or limiting the cache size.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium
OK I cleared the cache which was less than 1MB. I also turned off caching. Cross your fingers.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
Unfortunately, that didn't work. If I could find the actual file or files that were using up the remaining 706MB of my phone, I might be able to figure out what was going wrong.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
utmatt20 said:
Unfortunately, that didn't work. If I could find the actual file or files that were using up the remaining 706MB of my phone, I might be able to figure out what was going wrong.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try using root explorer or a similar root enabled file browser to go to the application data folder then look for the BackCountry Navigator app's data folder and see what files you can find, you may find some hints as to why the application is using so much storage space.
Did you ever get this sorted out? I have the same problem. Sold my last phone due to this problem. It definitely has something to do with BCN. Is there a way to tell the phone not to catalog that folder?
BTW I'm running it on an S3.
I'm having the same issue on my EVO LTE, running Viper ROM so it happens on Sense too. Either I get a notification to move apps because I'm out of space, or I'll get an install error when trying to update apps. It's always Media Storage is huge, I can clear it but then sometimes my Music Files don't get recognized by players even though I can see them in a file explorer. Very frustrating.
utmatt20 said:
I have an HTC Sensation running CM10. The very day I installed the CM10 ROM this problem started, I get an error saying " Storage space running out. Some functions may not work". I can clear the data and everything works fine until the next time it happens. Some days it happens 2 or 3 times a day. As far as I can tell, this is not a common problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I saw the same thing as your 'Disk Usage' thumbnail above, except the path was "Storage card -> Apps -> Media Storage -> Data", and it was using 3GB (out of 5.8GB total internal capacity available to end-users). Clicking on 'Media Storage' and clicking 'Show' brought me to the 'Amazon Fire Media Storage' app (a system app, the logo being 'Fire' in a red square).
After clearing all the 'Media Storage' app data, it got regenerated to 3.7GB after a couple hours and filled up my internal storage again. I then deleted an ebook reader app that I remember installing a couple days ago, and it automatically shrunk to 300MB shortly afterwards without my manually clearing the 'Media Storage' app data. About an hour after that, though, it regenerated back to 3.7GB and filled up my storage again.
Anyone know what files are consulted to populate this Media Storage/Data file (i.e., video, audio, ebooks), what process/processes populate it, and what reads it? It would be really helpful to examine its contents to at least look for a rough idea on which apps are using it heavily, and/or honoring '.nomedia' to prevent scanning.
Device: Amazon Fire 7in KFFOWI, running rooted FireOS 5.1.1
I've recently rooted my phone for the first time. After all the shenanigans, it seems like I have three "home" folders on my phone where application data has been saved in at one time or another: one in /sdcard/, one in /data/media/, and one in /data/media/0/. Attached are pictures of what I mean. I'm looking to see what I can clear out, since it's very messy atm and could free up considerable space.
It started off in /sdcard/ while I was still running 4.2, and that's where all my twrp backups were. After attempting to flash a 4.3 rom, it pointed to /data/media/ instead. (This of course scared the hell out of me when I couldn't find my backups.) I've seen some information about it changing because of the user accounts feature, but if anyone could clear it all up for me I'd be very appreciative.
Hi everyone!
So the inevitable has happened- a viruses infected my phone that my boyfriend soley uses. I knew viruses existed on Android but I didn't know to what extent.
The phone is a Samsung S5. It is NOT rooted.
My boyfriend was watching 'adult' videos and he has his phone set so you can hold your finger over the screen and not actually touch it to select things (IMO i think that feature is stupid! ). Anyway, While watching a video his finger hovered over one of the banner/block videos that are along the side of the actual video you are watching for too long he guessing and inadvertently selected something. He doesn't recall actually seeing anything download though.
Unfortunately because he likes to download some programs that require you to select in your settings to allow downloads from untrusted sources, he just always leaves that option selected. (Not smart).
He took screen shots of what happened next. I've included the screenshots he took in this post.
At this point his phone was frozen on the screens that popped up. He tried turning it off and on again but once back on the screens were still there and were stopping stopping him from doing anything on his phone. He didn't know what was going on and called me at work. Immediately I knew he had infected his phone, a similar type of virus was huge a few years for computers.
I didn't really know what to do so I suggested doing a factory reset. I figured he must have inadvertently downloaded something, and factory reset would get rid of everything.
When I came home from work he told me he did the factory reset like I said and the pop up screens that were preventing use of the phone were gone but he still thought he had a virus because his contacts were all messed up, they were very old and none of his newer contacts exsited (Im not sure where he got the backed up contacts that he did manage to get back...although they are mostly useless.). As well there are a lot of things missing, over 2000 pictures on the SD card have disappeared along with movies, documents, music etc... Almost 32gb of stuff!
I plugged the SD card into my computer thinking maybe his phone just wasn't reading it properly because the phone did show the SD card and you could view what was on it, but almost everything was missing.
All of the photos/videos were backed to his Google photos and they are all gone! The only thing there now is what is left still on his SD card. Checked Google photos trash and it says nothing was deleted.
His SD card is 32gb and use to be almost full, but now it has 27gb free!!!! Where did almost 27gb of data go!!?? And the approx 5gb of data left is just random stuff that I highly doubt would use up even close to 5gb...
(I just learned while typing this, that he was able to get most of his pictures back from Facebook, so nothing was removed from Facebooks backup)
I researched this for hours and I'm pretty sure this is a type of malicious Ransomeware Virus.
I think the virus is gone due to factory reset... Could I be wrong?
As for the missing stuff, my guess is either the missing data has actually been removed by the virus OR its still on the SD card but encrypted by the virus. (Which means it'd also be compacted?)
If it's still there but encrypted how can I find the encrypted files and unencrypted them.
Thanks for reading! Hopefully one of you will have an answer.
Cheers, Rebecca
This looks like the standard ransomware. I would look to see if there is one out there for android. I'm not sure there is a true version. What I mean by this is it locks out your bootloader. Can't be done on stock Samsung. So I think it is gone.
Now when you say he did a factory reset are you sure he didn't wipe the card by mistake?
The contacts sync with Google and what most likely happened is that have been saving to phone memory and not to the Gmail account. Which he most likely signed into after the factory reset.
As for the back up there should not have had anything that could remove them from Google pics.
So, i started getting memory full notifications on my S9+, so went in thinking I'd just have to move some pictures or other media, as it randomly decides it wants to save camera images to internal storage instead of the sd card. Even after moving and deleting apps i wasn't using, i keep getting this message of storage space running low.
Long story short, i finally went in and told it to show me hidden files, and i find this app called VisionProvider. I have 64gb internal storage, and this thing is using 36+gb! What the crap is it, do i need this, and how can i get rid of it or at least reduce its size?
I'd factory reset mine only take up 10.05 mb that seems like something went wrong or its showing wrong
Could try clearing the data and cache for the app to see if that helps.
As for what the app is it was rather easy to determine, and why it is probly best to not mess with removing it.
Looking in my apps list I found the vision provider which is a system app (so not something you can disable via the phone). Upon looking I saw mine is using 1.80MB of storage, but I imagine this is because I do not use Bixby for anything other then voice dictation for texts.
Looking at the "App details in store" I saw it was downloaded from Galaxy Store. Did a quick search on Galaxy store and saw plain as day what it was... A provider app for Bixby Vision, so given it's integrated with Bixby I would just clear the cache/data for the app rather then try to mess with it. IMHO safer to do this rather then attempt to remove it, break something and have more problems.
Vision provider
So, i went into mmt apps, and, through the hamburger menu, told it to show system apps. I had looked at it here before, but the buttons to clean cache and data were greyed out and i couldn't select them. This time, however, i wad ankle to select them both, and, voila, all is well in the Samsung android world. Thanks.