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I was surprised to see my wife's N1 only had 20 MB of internal memory. She is running Enomther's Rom, which runs great.. I don't think the issue is tied to that.
She has hardly any apps on her phone, and rarely does anything other than work emails (Touchdown) and Facebook/Twitter.
Considering how little she has on the phone, and how little she does with it I, was just really shocked that she would have so little internal memory. She called me just now and stated she has a notification that she missed a text message because she did not have enough memory.
What the heck could be taking up so much memory?
What's the fix? There isn't really anything to delete (that I'm aware of)....
Search seemed helpess with "internal" and "memory" there were WAY too many posts. Please help if you can!
Browser cache might be huge, if she has many sites opened in many browser windows.
Her "not many" apps might be "many" enough for a phone with limited internal memory like Nexus - having ~200MB for apps, data and cache together.
There are exactly 3 solutions:
1) Keep browser in check. It's always a good practice.
2) Use native Froyo method and move apps to SD.
3) Use Apps2EXT method and move apps to SD. You can also move Dalvik-cache to /cache.
Hmm, she has MAYBE 10 apps?
I downloaded a cache cleaner and ran that, it removed maybe 8 MBs? That was this past weekend, and she got that message about low memory today. I doubt she has even opened the browser since then to be honest. Very light user.
I sent enomther a tweet, his reply was:
RT @enomther @CallipH need to implement either dalvik-cache-2-/cache or apps2ext in SpareParts (DataStorage options) ... sysdc-2-/cache is default on cm6
okay, so option 1 is to move dalvik cache to sd, which I think you do in Advanced > Amon's recovery, right? Any ill effects from doing this if I switch roms?..
Option 2, apps2ext... she does not have an ext partition and frankly surprised this is needed... is the nexus that low on memory? My Vibrant has 1.6 GBs. same question, any ill effects if moving to another rom with the apps on the ext? I did that a lot back in the day with the G1. I remember having some issues and having to do fix permissions a lot.
Thanks for all the help man.
Check, what's using the memory. Just go over the apps.
You can't do Dalvik-to-SD, because it requires EXT partition, which you don't have. You can do Dalvik-to-Cache.
There is no hassle in having apps on EXT whatsoever. The only hassle is getting them there.
ROM has nothing to do with application data usage either.
Have you tried wiping the Dalvik cache? Worth ago in case there's some built up crap I spose.
^^ thanks.
^ I did before flashing the rom. Will do it again.
I know it's relative, but how much internal memory would you expect someone to have when they just have about 10 apps?
Depends on the apps. I can count 2 - Google Earth and Motonav, for example - that take together 50MB of space without even counting the cache part. Another 4 apps like that, and you're out of memory (if you don't move them to SD using Froyo's method or old Apps2SD-EXT method).
There's also numerous games that are > 10MB, can easily add up.
I'm curious if Touchdown (Exchzange work email) is doing something funky... I know the apps on her phone and they are all very small. Thank you guys all for the posts.
I think I may format her card and partition it and move the cache to the ext partition and see what her memory looks like after that.
Any issues you guys can think of with that, or other ideas?
Download DiskUsage, and it will give you a good idea of what the problem is...
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
OK I love to install games, lot, lot of games. One day, whilst I was installing, I had the message from the system to say that my phone had insufficient Database Memory and required me to delete some games to have the warning disappeared. When I checked with Titanium, I had only 12.5 MB left over 124 MB. I moved all the application if possible to SD Card but it does not free up much memory. So I would like to ask, is there any other way to get the job done effectively? or is there any apk to improve the Database Memory?
Sorry for noob question since I am new with Android and thank you very much
I would like an answer to this question as well, if there is any.
I deleted apps, text messages, emails, and contacts with limited success. As of now, I have a total of 35.8mb of free DB memory, but everything that's still present, I would like to keep. I'm guessing I'm going to run into this problem more and more in the future.
I would like a more convenient way of clearing this unusually small amount of memory that's available, or at least a way to check what data is present at the moment so I can clean it up more effectively.
So, to all you non-noobs: HELP?! Please?
Dear all,
first of all I wish to thank everyone in XDA that with his contribution helps us to make our devices blazing fast and really snappy.
Since I installed JPY firmware and I backed up every application I had the warning "Database almost full, please delete messages, contacts etc..." and in fact I have only 20Mb free.
I saw that Samsung to perform this big improvement in the software moved some application data in dbdata partition that is formatted to have only 128Mb!!
The problem is that at moment the maximum number of installable applications is limited due to dbdata space and this could be a big problem.
In other posts I read that other people had my same problem but no possible solution to fix it has been find out.
Is there any chance to fix this limitation?
Thank you for your awesome support
paky79 said:
Dear all,
first of all I wish to thank everyone in XDA that with his contribution helps us to make our devices blazing fast and really snappy.
Since I installed JPY firmware and I backed up every application I had the warning "Database almost full, please delete messages, contacts etc..." and in fact I have only 20Mb free.
I saw that Samsung to perform this big improvement in the software moved some application data in dbdata partition that is formatted to have only 128Mb!!
The problem is that at moment the maximum number of installable applications is limited due to dbdata space and this could be a big problem.
In other posts I read that other people had my same problem but no possible solution to fix it has been find out.
Is there any chance to fix this limitation?
Thank you for your awesome support
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, it can be fixed by:
1/. remove/relocate the files under /dbdata
2/. disable the disk full warning (it will show u the prompt if the free space is under a certain percentage)
I still have over 90 MB left. Just how many apps do you have? 100+?
I have ca 80 applications.
Is it safe to move the app data from dbdata? If yes, where do I move the data?
80 applications!?! you a collector?
Any solutions
I've had the problem also till recently when I installed Darky's 9.0 and did a wipe for the sake of cleanness.
I am sure I'm going to encounter it again and I would gladly take some measures now when i have the time to do it before I am constrained by it.
At a rough search I did find some info about it, some even here on XDA, but nobody had a definitive solution.
Is there a way to increase this partition size or keep some info stored there in another place ?
Is there an app that will tend to put big chunks of data there, more than usual?
Hope somebody with better kung fu than us drops by and enlightens us
Every Smartphone has limited space. Every Computer has limited space.
Everything has limited space.
It's a smartphone, not a huge trash container where you can put everything you find at market into.
Only install apps which you are using often and not apps which you're using once a year.
segun_aduba said:
I've had the problem also till recently when I installed Darky's 9.0 and did a wipe for the sake of cleanness.
I am sure I'm going to encounter it again and I would gladly take some measures now when i have the time to do it before I am constrained by it.
At a rough search I did find some info about it, some even here on XDA, but nobody had a definitive solution.
Is there a way to increase this partition size or keep some info stored there in another place ?
Is there an app that will tend to put big chunks of data there, more than usual?
Hope somebody with better kung fu than us drops by and enlightens us
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There was a discussion in the cache bug thread about increasing partition size. No one knows for sure because none of these problems popped up until quite recently. Cache is even more troublesome since it means we might not be able to download apps in the future.
But your usage is still unusual. I would suggest going through the app manager and see if any app is hogging up data.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
I also have this problem, using right now 45mb of 96mb, that is with only 44 downloaded apps installed...
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
I have 109 apps installed and have 105mb free in dbdata, go figure.
peachpuff said:
I have 109 apps installed and have 105mb free in dbdata, go figure.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have lagfix activated? Are you on 2.2.1 version?
I may be talking rubbish here, but shouldn't it be possible to move some of the folders to another partition and symlink them? This is Linux after all...
I'd try something like:
(THIS HAS NOT BEEN TESTED AND IT MIGHT BREAK SOMETHING)
- Move some of the biggest folders from /dbdata to another partition (if you're lagfixed and care about speed, you should move them to another partition with ext4 or whatever your lagfix uses). In a terminal emulator you could move them with:
mkdir /data/dbdata2; mv /dbdata/databases/com.whatever /data/dbdata2
- After moving them you should be able to symlink them with something like:
ln /data/dbdata2/com.whatever /dbdata/databases/com.whatever
Like I said, this isn't tested and might awfully break something (I'd do a backup and try with non-system programs first), but I'd guess it's worth a try if you really want to have more dbdata space.
EDIT: I just noticed that /system has limited space too, so you'd be better of moving them do /data, which seems to be the biggest partition on the SGS.
If anyone is interested I could try and create a shell script that would move all of the stuff from /dbdata to /data/dbdata and replace the stuff with symlinks automatically. Let me know...
I've been trying to recover some space on my Nexus one and have been largely successful in doing so with a combination of tricks, but while looking at my partitions and tallying up the numbers something didn't seem to be adding up right; the unit is supposed to have 512MB flash, but I was coming up about 60MB short.
I found this thread which discusses the partition layout of the N1; the sizes they show all seem to match up well with what my device shows. Now, the hex address of the end of the last partion (user data) ends just a couple MB short of 512MB; the start of the first partion (misc) however seems to start over 60MB into the memory space... is there a reason for this, and if so what's occupying those lowest 63.75MB of flash space?
Baseband, AKA "radio", is what you're looking for. Unless you want your Nexus not to boot anymore, it's not advisable to try and repartition baseband space.
Instead of working hard and uselessly wasting effort, use A2SD or any other kind of linking to SD-mounted EXT partition. No matter what you try, Nexus doesn't have nearly enough internal space for any common use.
That answers my question, thank you.
As I mentioned in my original message, I was successful in freeing enough space on my device; a combination of moving apps and libraries (copy to system/lib and symlink back to original location) into the system partition and clearing out bulky or unnecessary apps has left me with over 60MB of free data space without even having to resort to fancy A2SD business (just normal android move to SD card). I was simply curious about what was filling in the remaining space on the flash chip and the radio pretty much fits the bill.
As someone with pretty average amount of user apps (a bit less than 100) and 700 MB user space taken, I can't see the point in doing what you mentioned for anything but pure fun. But if that suits you - I won't argue.
Well, by my app drawer I'm sitting at ~125 (44 purely in data, 34 moved to SD with standard android method, rest either native system or moved there) apps, and if my "puny" N1 can have 60MB free and not even need ext-style A2SD I'm not quite sure how the N1 doesn't have "nearly enough internal space for any common use". Seems to me the point (not "pure fun" as you dismissively imply) of doing what I've done is to able to keep using a pretty decent phone that still has more than enough storage space if you make the least bit of effort to manage it.
But hey, who am I to judge if you prefer to buy whatever latest phone the carriers tell you you should want every 12 months just so they can cram more bloated apps on it?
I appreciate the answer to my initial question about what's using the lowest block of flash storage (I was simply curious about what was using it - I couldn't find information if it was flash overprovisioning or some other low-level portion of the OS using it), but I don't really appreciate the unnecessary negative attitude and commentary for what was just a simple question. Thanks anyways.
I guess you didn't understand my point(s). I'll elaborate:
First and foremost, my point is this: N1 is a crap of a phone. Having it for over 1 year, and trying to adapt it to my wife for 3 or 4 months later on before giving up on it, taught me that this phone can't be dealt with by anyone who doesn't want to accept its touchscreen limitations. It was so refreshing having the phone (MT4G in my case) just react without fuss and not expecting it to crap out at any given time - not even mentioning the huge speed-up. The price of "upgrade" (selling the N1 and buying any previous-generation phone, like DHD/MT4G/DS/DZ) can be brought down to as low as $50, and the benefits are huge, I already wrote it a couple of times on the forum.
To the storage point (actually, several points):
N1's NAND is painfully slow, compared to anything, even to regular Class 2 SD card. You can try copying any large file from NAND to EXT and back, from NAND to NAND and from EXT to EXT and see what takes more time. You're likely to discover that A2SD actually adds performance instead of hurting it.
My app data (/data/data/*) alone takes roughly the same space as your whole internal /data storage has, so I guess the amount of apps alone isn't that meaningful of a measurement. I still call it a perfectly normal and average data usage - I don't have anything special installed, no heavy games that save 200+ MB of data on internal memory, just apps like Goggles, Flash, iGO and a couple of other big apps that aren't movable by normal means (and tend to crap the system out when they're forced to move). The problem in your approach is not even the one-time amount of work you had to invest to make that space, but the amount of work you'll have to invest to keep the phone running - moving system updates to /system upon every update, clearing browser cache, etc - generally, keeping things in constant check. Free time is something you learn to appreciate when you don't have enough, and more hassle-free setup is always preferred IMHO.
But again, different people have different needs, so while I can post my point of view - I don't argue with yours.
Thank you for elaborating, actually; it clarifies much that was not apparent in your earlier posts. This thread isn't really about the pros and cons of the N1 so all I'll say is that the advantages of the N1 (small size, OLED, build quality, tricolor trackball LED, etc..) still outweigh its manageable downsides for me, even compared to very modern handsets - so I'll stick with it until I can find a suitable upgrade that I'm happy with (is it so hard for HTC to make a <=4" qHD AMOLED? Seriously...).
Your point about the NAND being slow is interesting; this is something I hadn't heard and will have to benchmark; if it pans out it would be a point in favor of A2SD, but not really in favor of replacing the device over it
The upkeep I don't find that bad; Titanium backup makes integrating updated system apps a single touch for the batch, and I've only got a couple libraries symlinked into system that are unlikely to be frequently updated. With the space I've freed I shouldn't need to clear browser caches nearly as often - so it actually saves me time and frustration regularly for the one-time effort.
Thanks again for taking the time to reply and to clarify your points
If a2sd+ doesn't work for you you could do custom mtd partitions like I did using fireats custom mtd if u google it u will find it basically you can shrink ur system partition down to almost half because it is being wasted I mean whatever size u want to define it as. I'm using miui and my system partition that i defined is 120 mb (4 mbs are free just in case) and my cache partition is 15 mb. Now that leaves 301 mbs free for user data. I have 107 user apps installed about 10 games or so and I still have 120 mb free for user data for me that's more than enough. This way ur phone won't be buggy because u will only use the system partition for ur rom again I would suggest miui since it takes minimal space and is very smooth and stable with amazing battery life (I use tiamat kernel). Hope this helped
---------- Post added at 06:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:52 PM ----------
Oh if u use a2sd in conjunction with custom mtd then u can have close to 750 mb of space available for user data given that ur sd ext partition is 512 mb (which was stable for me using 8gb card) that's basically rivaling new phone memory so don't just call the nexus one off just yet it can surprise anyone that knows how to play with it or stuck with it for 2years like me lol.
I've already been using root access with shell and titanium backup to move apps and libraries into the system partition without resizing it, so I'm already using the available space there. The only major difference is you've dramatically shrunk your cache partition from the default of (IIRC) 100MB down to 15MB; this seems like a pretty huge reduction, and I feel this would have performance implications, especially when running larger apps...
Other than that, if I find my current space as set up proves to be inadequate in the future (it seems just fine for now) then a2sd appears to be the best option for those who need even more additional space on a nexus one.
15 mb is more than enough for cache partition unless u plan to download huge 3d games and as we all know gaming isn't the reason that we have held on to nexus one for so long I haven't seen any app large enough to not install due to my partition size. I messed around with that too first I had it set at 5 mb but that made market force close every time then I set it at 10 was stable but large apps couldn't download and then I tried 15 and hasn't given me a single problem. Otherwise all that space is wasted so why not dedicate it to user data? With 20 mb partition u can download almost all games that can function on nexus one but since I'm not a big mobile gamer I stuck with 15 mb cache.
Most normal programs don't use /cache.
To fix your cache market issue:
Code:
su
busybox mv /cache/download /sd-ext/download
ln -s /sd-ext/download /cache/download
If you don't have a sd-ext you could use /sdcard/download instead. The directory will already exist if you've downloaded anything from the browser, so I just remove /cache/download before linking. I used to get package file invalid errors from this setup though...
Ti backup will also let you move stuff to /system and re-odex your rom instead of shrinking /system. Sure, everytime system stuff updates you need to click a few times, but unless space is real tight, it works fine. The re-odex-ed rom seems to boot faster for me than with external dalvik-cache, too, but that could just be me pretending. I've never busted out the stop-watch.
I like to keep apks on a2sd and put dalvik-cache on internal memory. It's kinda like raiding the two interfaces together to get the sum of the bandwidths of both when launching a program.
siberx: I'm sticking with the N1 until I find a decent phone that has been designed to fit in my pocket instead of sitting in a purse or on the bar too... I considered the glacier for a while, but, near as I can tell, the only benefits of going there are better touch screen and gpu.
I used firerat's mtd patch to rejigger my girlfriend's desire paritions to something more sensible (something like a 230mb system partition stock? ridiculous!) and that worked smashingly; the same trick against my N1 didn't go so well though. Seems like my Nexus with CM6.1 on it is still using the cache partition for dalvik at least partially, and I think shrinking it down to 20mb made it too small to boot right. Not a big deal anyways; I've got enough space to work with as is
I tried to do some benchmarks on my internal flash for comparsion, but the only decent benchmark I could find (without getting manual about it on command line) was Passmark's mobile benchmark; problem is they wan't 90MB free to run the internal memory benchmark, so my 60MB isn't cutting it for that
Anybody know of a decent benchmark that will bench both internal and SD read/write speeds that doesn't need such a huge chunk of free space?
ezdi: I considered for awhile buying a G2 for the faster CPU/GPU and improved touchscreen, but ultimately decided against it due to the extra weight and thickness (combined with the nexus' other advantages like OLED and tricolour LED). Eventually some manufacturer will figure out there's a still a market for compact high-end phones...
ezdi said:
siberx: I'm sticking with the N1 until I find a decent phone that has been designed to fit in my pocket instead of sitting in a purse or on the bar too... I considered the glacier for a while, but, near as I can tell, the only benefits of going there are better touch screen and gpu.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Better touch screen is a reason enough by itself.
GPU, much faster and bigger internal memory (both system and data), much faster and bigger RAM, and most of all - 90% HW-compatibility to one of the most popular devices in the world (DHD) - means staying updated and speedy with ROMs that fly where they crawl on Nexus (if they exist at all). Plus - all ROMs besides ICS are 100% functional, CM, MIUI, Sense 3/3.5, you name it. And if it's not enough, 20% hassle-free overclock is standard.
From quite satisfied Glacier owner.
Am running PA 3.60 which is great. I've now run some additional script that culls out and slims down the ROM and gapps. Again, everything runs great. I probably have a lot more memory free now than before. But I'm not sure what good that is.
Traditionally, we want to free up memory so we can install more apps - a2d and other methods help to keep things clear.
I don't want to do that - I want to be able to run more than one or two apps at the same time. But I don't know which memory types to clear up to do that.
The ROM is in, well, ROM, so making it smaller may not help free up memory if there's fixed 512MB used for it.
I know Android is actually running a lot of processes at once. What I mean is that if I load an app, say Candy Crush, then run another app, say Grindr, I can switch back and forth pretty much ok and each app resumes where it left off without any noticable reloading/refreshing. But if I then run another app, say Scruff, then as soon as I try to switch back to one of the others, it has to reload/refresh/restart. So clearly, there wasn't enough memory available to keep all 3 resident and it swapped some out or simply released it.
Logically, if I have more of a certain type of memory free, this will not happen as often. I know it depends on how much memory and other resources an app requires, but I don't need to get into that level of analysis yet. First and foremost, what sort of memory should I try to make as much of as possible to let me swtich between apps without so much reloading?
douginoz said:
Am running PA 3.60 which is great. I've now run some additional script that culls out and slims down the ROM and gapps. Again, everything runs great. I probably have a lot more memory free now than before. But I'm not sure what good that is.
Traditionally, we want to free up memory so we can install more apps - a2d and other methods help to keep things clear.
I don't want to do that - I want to be able to run more than one or two apps at the same time. But I don't know which memory types to clear up to do that.
The ROM is in, well, ROM, so making it smaller may not help free up memory if there's fixed 512MB used for it.
I know Android is actually running a lot of processes at once. What I mean is that if I load an app, say Candy Crush, then run another app, say Grindr, I can switch back and forth pretty much ok and each app resumes where it left off without any noticable reloading/refreshing. But if I then run another app, say Scruff, then as soon as I try to switch back to one of the others, it has to reload/refresh/restart. So clearly, there wasn't enough memory available to keep all 3 resident and it swapped some out or simply released it.
Logically, if I have more of a certain type of memory free, this will not happen as often. I know it depends on how much memory and other resources an app requires, but I don't need to get into that level of analysis yet. First and foremost, what sort of memory should I try to make as much of as possible to let me swtich between apps without so much reloading?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try enabling zram, I haven't tried it personally but its supposed to allow for more multitasking.
Sent from my Nexus One using xda app-developers app
Moved To Q&A
You may of considered it dev based, but its a question so belongs in the Q&A section.
I've tried ZRAM now for a couple of days but makes no difference. I also have the problem on another Android device. I'm convinced its some sort of design limitation of the opsys or something. When I start up Grindr, it takes a long time to load all the images, make connections, etc. Then I start of Gruff, and it does the same. As long as I don't try to go to another app, I can flip between the two of them without them restarting/reloading/reinitialising themselves. That is clearly because their pages didn't get swapped out of memory or flagged for deletion and deleted.
But if I do something else, or even try to use additional functions within either app, its too much and the next time I try to flip to the other app, it has to reload and reestablish connections etc.
Its not just those apps either. The same with a game like Candy Crush. Or many many apps.
So either my devices don't have enough memory of some form to allow many concurrent apps to run without being swapped out, or Android can't handle it and unnecessarily swaps out or deletes a process's memory pages to make room for the next process, >>> even if the device has plenty of memory<<<.
I don't know which type of memory the opsys needs if this is the case. I'd like to know so that i can make sure there's ample available so that this constant restarting doesn't keep happening. It seems stupid to me that Android does this if the device has got "heaps" of available memory (no pun intended). Newer devices will continually have more and more built in memory, so if Android is doing this arbitrarily and not because of space issues then its, well, stupid.
I have to assume its my devices that are the problem. They're both old (Nook Color, Nexus One). But with the NC, I'd assume we can partition some of that 5GB for use as main memory to run lots of processes concurrently, without this annoying swapping/page deletion/forcing re-inits all the time.
I'm also having problems figuring out where in XDA to post this question - its not NC specific, or dev specific, but I need answers from people that know the Android architecture so I can work out if its possible to stop this from happening.