Database Develop

Mystery storage memory bloat

My storage memory seems to steadily but significantly grow and grow. It is now at 98% full and I can't find any space. Normally after a hard reset and installing all of my data and apps this figure is in the 80% range. I do keep my temporary internet files cleaned out by removing everything from Windows\Profiles\guest\Temporary Internet Files which can generally free up a very large amount of space, say 10+ MB or so. The obvious additional pieces of information are:
-no new large files added
-quite a few SMSs - but not a thousand, maybe 50-200 total
-no new programs installed
-the mystery bloat seems to be in the Windows directory which is now 138MB (seems odd) as reported by Resco Explorer
I have used find large files feature and have thoroughly browsed my Windows directory and just can not find the large file(s) causing this. Could this be some kind of memory leak? This is the second time this has happened and the last time I resorted to a hard reset which drastically improved the problem (got rid of it and got me back down to the 80% level again which it seemed to stay at for quite some time). I really do not want to get in this mandatory endless hard reseting loop.
BTW: AT&T device and ROM, bloatware removed by reset during bloatware installation at start up. Any advice greatly appreciated.

you sure your removing the PIE cache by opening PIE and selecting to clear history and delete files by going to tools/options in PIE? thats the most common place you get internal memory getting eaten up. ive had 40mb go through PIe because i forgot to delete the files through the PIE settings

Thanks. Emptying that directory does the same thing. Just to be sure I did that anyway. No change. At 96% now. Ugh.

Give us a list of...
Device, is it a stock AT&T Tilt or one of the beta's we are hearing about?
Firmware, items shown on startup from soft reset!
Installed Apps/Cabs,
cause you could have something storing log files that you don't know about!
then we can have a reference of where to go!

OK here goes...
R 1.27.12.11 (std AT&T)
G 22.45.88.07H
D 1.57.00.00
Aps (in addition to std. ROM):
Opera
G Maps
Resco Expl+Today
TT6
iGuidance4
PC MAME
Calc98
Kaiser Notification (LED control)
TCPMP
World Card Mobile
Weather to Go (Tonaya)
MS Voice Com.
MS Live Search
Flash Video Bundle
Thanks again!

Look for a file named Today in the Windows directory. I noticed this on my Tilt ROM and it was steadily growing. It's safe to delete.

Also check your email, this can grow rapidly if you get attachments.
?Glitch

Does google maps save it's map cache to the storage card? I thought it didn't. If not, that would likely cause your memory to drop if you use google maps a lot.

Thanks so much guys.
@URPREY: The only file like that is Today_Order_23Jul07.cab and it is a whopping 3kB
@?Glitch: I only use SMS not MMS not e-mail, I think these guys are pretty darn small.
@snoogisnguy: I thought google maps downloaded everything it needed sort of in real time and cleaned stuff up in real time as well. Can you point me to a directory to examine for large files?

Bribe
OK hate to resort to a "bribe", but this problem is killing me. $25 to the person who can solve it. I'd be happy to simply make another donation to the forum as well.

Google maps keeps almost everything it downloads, if you use that a lot that would be my first guess.
check My device/application data/GoogleMaps and the file cashe-GLM.
Mine's about 2M and i rarely use it.

Try memmaid from Dinarsoft. It can evaluate your storage usage, including the google cache and tell you what is taking up the space. It's got a free 15 day trial.
http://www.dinarsoft.com/memmaid/

hard reset and start again... might be an issue that you may never find
on another note, why dont you sync up to windows and check the file/folder size of each one you have... theres not that many and so it should only take a few minutes
atleast that way you can narrow it down to what area of your phone is taking up so much memory... and then narrow it down to a file hopefully
just an idea

swamp2 said:
Thanks so much guys.
@URPREY: The only file like that is Today_Order_23Jul07.cab and it is a whopping 3kB
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which file explorer did you use to check? The file that was on mine was a hidden file and had no extension so I only saw it with Total Commander. It grew very quickly and I had to delete it several time. I believe it was a cache file for the today screen. I use an RSS today plugin and I think that's what caused it. I have no issues after changing to a cooked ROM.

dunneldeen said:
Try memmaid from Dinarsoft. It can evaluate your storage usage, including the google cache and tell you what is taking up the space. It's got a free 15 day trial.
http://www.dinarsoft.com/memmaid/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks guys! All of the other suggestions, although great ideas, turned out to not be the culprit. The one above, with some more detective work was the winner. Memmaid located a folder called ~Recycled that was 15+ MB. It is a bug (or maybe even a "feature") in Resco Explorer that it does not show this directory ewven when you check show everything such as hidden, system, in ROM, etc. This directory held some files that were cached images from web browsing as well as other unidentifiable files. Memmaid also nicely deleted the entire directory. All was well until I got a bit too aggressive and used Memmaid to move all of the application caches to the memory card. This made my system very unstable, slow and almost unuseable. Luckily I could get back in Memmaid and undo those changes. Anyway a bit of a long struggle but finally this very annoying and crippling problem is solved. I really hope this thread helps out others with a similar problem.
As a follow up question does anyone know how to prevent such bloat in this directory in the first place? Seems like a very crippling feature of WM wihtout access to this directory.
dunneldeen: Was your suggestion enough of a solution that you want the "bribe" money? Thanks again either way!

You simply have to remove "recycle bin" feature from Resco Explorer settings, so your files will be deleted as soon as you do it and they will doesn't go to the recycle bin that in theory you have to empty manually, like your do with the one on your PC.

Out of Memory?

I have looked and looked and i cant seem to find any information pertaining to my issue. I have a stock tilt with the HTC Home plugin, HTC Album, Kaiser Tweak, Shogunmark wm6 threader, and Arcsoft MMS enable and composer.
Now on to the problem. I will be texting through the shogunmark program or just messing around on the phone, nothing specific, and i will get a little box that says out of memory: please close some windows and try again. When i look in the AT&T task manager all it says is open is the messaging program and activesync (even though it is not hooked to my computer at all).
Any ideas or suggestions or ways to fix this problem would be greatly appreciated.

Have you checked your device memory? It could possibly be quite low because you’ve installed far too many applications on your device memory, and not on your storage card (if you even have a storage card?)
Sometimes, temporary/unnecessary files end up installed and duplicated on your device memory. If you don’t need them, delete them. Applications like SKtools can also help you free up much needed space by deleting unnecessary files.

Is there a specific place to obtain SKTools? I searched and all i saw was someone else mentioning it, not a link or anything.

your problem is with the SMS threader you have. I'd love to search for you but I havent got the time right now. I personally posted a fix in another thread and I have seen the fix in other threads as well. It's out there, go get it.

http://s-k-tools.com/index.html?sktools/m_feat.html Even without the programme, click on ‘start’ then ‘settings’ then ‘system’ and then ‘memory’. You’ll be able to see both your storage and program memory.
To give you an idea, my storage memory is 92.75MB and my programme memory is 61.65 MB. If you’re memory is very low, then this could be the programme. This can be easily fixed by clicking on ‘file explorer’ then ‘my device’ and sifting through your programmes and deleting any uneeded programmes.
SK tools is meant to be pretty good as well, but it costs about $17. I’ve always deleted uneeded programmes manually by myself too.
But it looks like Grizzley has suggested a likely problem with your SMS. Maybe this could be the problem too...?

need to free up some main memory space

during the past few days, the diamond has been telling me that space in the main memory is going low. i go and see that there is only about 1.6 mb left. i usually install programs in the 4gb memory so i don't think those are programs. does opera leave cookies and other browser data in the main memory? what else should i delete to free up space?

Memory eater...
kevinf1990 said:
during the past few days, the diamond has been telling me that space in the main memory is going low. i go and see that there is only about 1.6 mb left. i usually install programs in the 4gb memory so i don't think those are programs. does opera leave cookies and other browser data in the main memory? what else should i delete to free up space?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Opera eats LOADS of storage memory, as does Google Maps and lots of other stuff. There are a number of free apps available to clean up your device, but I find the best way is to just soft-reset. All the TEMP stuff is cleared away, and the device is free to run again!
Search the 'Themes, Applications and Software' forum for 'Clear Temp', or 'Clear RAM'... something like that!?

Free Memory on HTC Diamond
I had the same problem and it was my Outlook Mail. I synch with the office and had thousands of emails in my In and Outboxes. Delete from your outlook account on your PC/Laptopn and then resynch. You may need to delete from your device as there may not be enough room left to perform a synch.
Hope that helps

the first thing i did was a soft reset via the red button on the back but the remaining memory stayed the same. also i don't have al ot of email in my inbox. they are usually all deleted

i've been having this problem too, and now my touchflo won't even start up, and the phone has become really really slow. it takes ten minutes to just load a text to read. and right now i can't call anyone and they can't call me....if i do a soft reset, will my contacts be lost?

soft reset is a simple reset, your contacts won't be deleye, but if you do a hard reset, you loose all contacts, setting...

ok thanks, i'll try a soft reset and see what happens. i havent found an answer to my problems using the google search for this site though....

i can't even connect with active sync

Here are some tips:
1. Opera. Press the button at the bottom right and go into "Settings". Then "Privacy", then "Delete Cache". Sometimes the clear temp programs don't find the memory that Opera stores unless you have set them up correctly.
2. Use file explorer to see if you can go into the My Device/My Documents/My Pictures and see if there are any pictures you don't mind deleting. Also, while you are there also check My Music, and My Videos folders. Delete anything you don't want or relocate them into Internal Storage.
3. You can check to see if your Outlook (e-mails, contacts, calendar etc) has too much data. Check this on My Device using File Explorer. You can see a file called pim.vol. I have 2000 calendar appointments, 400 contacts and no e-mails/sms' and mine is 5.25MB in size. I think this is about right. If you have a silly amount of memory in this, then you do have something in Outlook you could delete....
4. Use a program like MemMaid, SKTools or Clear Temp to clean up bad links, registry etc.
5. Google Maps may take up 2MB or so. I think it is limited to around this amount.
6. Use Pocket Mechanic or similar to relocate installed programs to Internal Storage. Note though that some programs still will keep some files on the device memory so you cannot free up all of the memory.
7. Use MemMaid to check to see where all your storage has gone. This has a very good application to show you exactly where it is and also linked to the file explorer so it is easy to go to the offending file and delete it.
8. It is better to back up your phone first just incase you delete anything you shouldn't have.....
9. Flash a new ROM. I use Cloudy's 1.1 one. It is great. He has made two and they both leave you with a lot of free memory. I have many installed programs (mostly on Internal Storage) and I still have over 50MB of free ROM and RAM....
10. Use Diamond Tweak to disable the HTC dialer and use the Windows Dialer instead. I think this will save you about 2MB or RAM. It may not look quite as nice, but you can tart it up a bit with a new dialer skin....
Good luck

Tilt memory is full?

So the main directory on my phone has a total of 124 mb of space but my phone says i only have about 8 mb of space left. I connected my tilt to my pc and opened my tilts root directory and checked the size of all the files in it and only got about 32 mb of data. So what am I missing? If my phone can hold 124 mb and im using 32 mb y does it say I only have 8 mb of space left? Also i keep all of my apps and progs along with all my pics, music, .cab files and all other stuff on my 4 GB sd card. Can anyone give me an idea whats going on?

Do you have a bazillion text messages saved on it?

still not enough space.
soooo... yeah i did have a **** ton of txt measages, but i stil have about 60mb of missing space anyone have any other thoughts?

And it's not a cache used by the OS?

Amorphous86 said:
soooo... yeah i did have a **** ton of txt measages, but i stil have about 60mb of missing space anyone have any other thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have subtracted the space taken up by your rom ?
Try these.

all good now.
thanks a ton man that clear temp app did the trick. now i have plenty of free space

i have a similar problem. I have deleted everything i can think of, but the more stuff i delete, the less space i appear to have. I have removed all the programs i could as well, but now it says i have less that 856K storage memory. I had over 5MB full earlier today, but as i was deleting stuff, and removing programs, my free space kept going down. Is windows making copies and storing these items somewhere?
I tried downloading both of the cabs above but it told me a message about an invalid header, so i was unable to try them.
When i look in my "windows" folder, under "My Device" i see a lot of the old programs that i supposedly deleted. I am unable to delete them from that view though. I cant even restore from my Sprite Backup because there is not enough space to restore. I reinstalled my PHM Registry Editor but i am not very familiar with it. Is there a way to delete unneeded things from there?
I dont have a ton of texts messages, but i do have quite a few image messages. I was in the process of sending them to my email, and deleting them when i ran out of space to even be able to open them.
Any suggestions? BTW, i have Windows Mobile 6.0

Last time I ran out of memory it was due to a voice recorder running until there was no room left.
I also had an issue with memory on SD card.
Stylez posted me this handy cab - will let you see what is where
There is also the 'find large files' under the memory tab for a starting point.
Good luck

brandall said:
Last time I ran out of memory it was due to a voice recorder running until there was no room left.
I also had an issue with memory on SD card.
Stylez posted me this handy cab - will let you see what is where
There is also the 'find large files' under the memory tab for a starting point.
Good luck
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will give it a try, if it lets me even install it. Last two Cabs it wouldnt allow me to install because of space. I took out the 1 gig SD card i have in the slot, and checked under the memory tab with the "find large files" and only came back with like 4 files, all around 200-300k.
UPDATE: Wouldnt even allow me to install cab file

loyolacs said:
I will give it a try, if it lets me even install it. Last two Cabs it wouldnt allow me to install because of space. I took out the 1 gig SD card i have in the slot, and checked under the memory tab with the "find large files" and only came back with like 4 files, all around 200-300k.
UPDATE: Wouldnt even allow me to install cab file
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you remove some other programs you have installed to make space? You can always put them back on once you've solved the problem....
Emptying your deleted items might help too...
Drag your pictures and videos over to your pc via activesync....
Did you run Cleartemp? Clearing cache etc ?
If it was me I'd be backing up what I need and doing a hard reset - When the phone gets laggy and clogged up it's the sure fire way to get things running smoothly again...... It would be a must for me!

Thanks for the suggestions. I was able to clear up a decent amount of space by deleting a punch of MMS messages i had. I had been in the process of sending them over to my email because i was at work and couldnt try synching the phone and moving them. I didnt noticed in the settings that it was creating a copy in the "sent" folder, as well as keeping it in the "delete" area. After clearing that up, i saved a bunch of space.
I am still noticing in the Windows folder of My Device that there are a lot of older programs taking up a bunch of space. These are all programs that i deleted or removed at some point. Not sure why they are hanging around.
I have tried using the two cab files posted by denco7, but i am unable to install them. Just tells me they are unsuccessful. Are they specific to a certain version of Windows Mobile? Is there any message logging that would tell me why they failed?

loyolacs said:
Thanks for the suggestions. I was able to clear up a decent amount of space by deleting a punch of MMS messages i had. I had been in the process of sending them over to my email because i was at work and couldnt try synching the phone and moving them. I didnt noticed in the settings that it was creating a copy in the "sent" folder, as well as keeping it in the "delete" area. After clearing that up, i saved a bunch of space.
I am still noticing in the Windows folder of My Device that there are a lot of older programs taking up a bunch of space. These are all programs that i deleted or removed at some point. Not sure why they are hanging around.
I have tried using the two cab files posted by denco7, but i am unable to install them. Just tells me they are unsuccessful. Are they specific to a certain version of Windows Mobile? Is there any message logging that would tell me why they failed?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try doing a soft reset to kill all processes before installing.

Main Memory Low

I save all my programs and install them on the internal drive. I am still getting a low memory warning. Are there any specific places I need to look , i.e Windows folder, etc.., where I can remove useless files? I'm afraid to delete some important things.
I have an Alltel Touch Diamond. Thanks in advance.

Low memory warning is not about the storage where you save your stuff & apps. Its the RAM of the diamond. To solve the issue you'll probably have to install another ROM with lower mem usage or close TF3D before running your heavy apps.

HI THERE
the program pocket mechanic solve me a lot of that issue .
after installing the prog. i removed some what of files to the intenal storage .
it did work for me just great /

windows folder/directory
open windows directory. goto Opera folder. goto images folder. any files that aren't jpg or png (meaning files that will have an opera logo in front of them) are deletable. If you use opera a lot and have never done this, there may be many. Also Windows/Messaging. this stores info from all emails, even when you delete, info is left here- delete all old stuff. If you feel iffy about trying any of this, create a folder in your internal storage to cut these files into, and if you have any trouble or do something wrong, you can cut/copy them right bsck (but these sre things i do to keep memory clear). Also, ClearTemp is an AWESOME HELPFUL program (and free). I think v1.21 is the latest, but after 3rd day of using it, it had recovered about 10mb of storage memory. (set it up properly, din't just hit 'clean'). good luck.
Lastly, some early diamonds (roms) had a known issue with unrecoverable storage memory, so last case scenario, update to newest official rom.

nickschot said:
Low memory warning is not about the storage where you save your stuff & apps. Its the RAM of the diamond. To solve the issue you'll probably have to install another ROM with lower mem usage or close TF3D before running your heavy apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
au contraire. memory on diamond is partitioned 3ways (storage memory, program memory, internal storage)
when you get a 'main memory low' msg, it's usually because your storage memory (not RAM), and not program memory, has dropped to <1mb. not your operating memory or program memory.

UgXvibe said:
I save all my programs and install them on the internal drive. I am still getting a low memory warning. Are there any specific places I need to look , i.e Windows folder, etc.., where I can remove useless files? I'm afraid to delete some important things.
I have an Alltel Touch Diamond. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I dealt with this on my first diamond. Had to return it - it is an issue on early diamonds, known by htc (storage not erasing things it should, regardless of user settings). A search will turn up a handful of other threds on this topic.

Thanks for all the replies.. here are screens of what I'm talking about.
As you can see I have a ton of storage on the Internal but 1Mb left on Device... If you still agree that I should follow the advice above I will do that. Just wanted to clarify what I was talking about.

thank you scottspa74
I have exactly the same problem with storage memory and what scottspa74 proposed just gave me the solution to my problem .
Thank you very much

Well, I also found that if you have taken a lot of pictures and video with the phone it takes up a ton of device storage. Try deleting big video files or transferring them somewhere else.