\windows folder content - XPERIA X1 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey guys,
some time ago I've tried to free some space from my internal memory, so I've chosen several files to remove in my \windows directory, like ringtones, 007 trailer and some .cabs of default installed programs. Overall size was about 90MB, what is pretty nice while I had like 100MB free space on internal. I know these files can't be just deleted, so I've prepared fake files with the same name, but zero size and I did these steps:
1. backup of chosen files
2. rewrite old files with new files of zero size using Total Commander
!! BUT !! when I did so, free space of internal memory was always the same (even after restart)
3. so, when I saw it had no effect, I restored original files from backup back to the \windows folder and I was shoked when I saw 10MB of free memory
4. as a last step, I've changed these files again with those zero sized and I had the free space back
Now I have the same amount of free space as I had at the beginning, but with zero sized fake files instead of original files.
I want to ask:
a) why my method did not work??
b) how can I really free up some space?? (by removing those useless files)
c) where is the "ROM image" located?? I mean .. if I'll change those original files with fake files and I'll do hard reset, what will happen? Will be those original files restored from some hidden ROM image or are they necessary to keep (for any reason) in \windows folder?
Thank you for any ideas.
FYI I am using stock R3A ROM.

C'mon ... I am sure somebody knows the answers. I've already read several threads about deleting files in windows folder, but all of them were about overwriting files with new, fake files. There were nothing about free memory. And also I can't find the answer on my third, probably most important question
c) where is the "ROM image" located?? I mean .. if I'll change those original files with fake files and I'll do hard reset, what will happen? Will be those original files restored from some hidden ROM image or are they necessary to keep (for any reason) in \windows folder?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any help is appreciated.

on wm there is a flash area
devided into 2 places 1 is storage
1 is rom
rom is read only after one flash the firmware
you can overshadow files in the rom flash with empty files
but they don't mean they are not still there
but it's don't matter because files on rom don't take up storage space at all
they take up rom space it's 2 seperate "partitions" if that makes something you can understand better
only way to truely remove files from the rom flash is to cook a rom without them
and even if you do that that will not give you more storage space as it's 2 seperate spaces
so basicly you're barking up the wrong tree for more storage

Thanks man. This answer is absolutely enough for me, now I understand it much better.

Related

What to keep after rom upgrade?

Hi everyone.
I have a Google G1 and have recently upgraded to Cyanogen 6.0.0.
After the upgrade there are a lot of files left on the SD card and I would like to know which I need to keep and which I can get rid of?
The files are;
Android folder which contains another folder called data, which contains the following files; com.coolaris.media and com.google.android.apps.genie.geniewidget.news-content-cache
other folders are;
Clockworkmod
.android_secure
and in the download folder there are lots of .apk files all are downloadfile.apk from 1 to 14.
Do I need to keep any of these files on my sd card or can they be deleted after the installation?
Thank you for any help.
steveluigi said:
Hi everyone.
I have a Google G1 and have recently upgraded to Cyanogen 6.0.0.
After the upgrade there are a lot of files left on the SD card and I would like to know which I need to keep and which I can get rid of?
The files are;
Android folder which contains another folder called data, which contains the following files; com.coolaris.media and com.google.android.apps.genie.geniewidget.news-content-cache
other folders are;
Clockworkmod
.android_secure
and in the download folder there are lots of .apk files all are downloadfile.apk from 1 to 14.
Do I need to keep any of these files on my sd card or can they be deleted after the installation?
Thank you for any help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would just keep all of that on your SD card, since it doesn't take up that much space to begin with.
However, I had a bunch of those downloadfile.apk's in my download folder, I deleted all of them, and everything was okay. You can probably delete all of those and not have a problem.
Thank you very much for the help mattdrumz, very kind.

Storage issue (Phantom partition?)

So my One has been well above 20gigs of used space for some time, With an average of about 3 gigs of free space at any given time. I've checked my sdcard folder and it is about 5gb of space total (with downloads and everything else). There have been occasions where I plug the phone into USB and go to a folder quick and the files are ones I've never seen before (example in downloads folder the files are different then my actual downloads folder). I also have a directory 0, emulated, and legacy inside of Storage. These are exact synced copies of sdcard. Each taking up the same space (so 4x the actual amount of used space) and if I delete a file/folder for anyone of these directories it removes it from all including the sdcard.
Has anyone experienced this? is there a way to fix this without wiping the entire phone clean?
jmalone1187 said:
So my One has been well above 20gigs of used space for some time, With an average of about 3 gigs of free space at any given time. I've checked my sdcard folder and it is about 5gb of space total (with downloads and everything else). There have been occasions where I plug the phone into USB and go to a folder quick and the files are ones I've never seen before (example in downloads folder the files are different then my actual downloads folder). I also have a directory 0, emulated, and legacy inside of Storage. These are exact synced copies of sdcard. Each taking up the same space (so 4x the actual amount of used space) and if I delete a file/folder for anyone of these directories it removes it from all including the sdcard.
Has anyone experienced this? is there a way to fix this without wiping the entire phone clean?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you go between AOSP/Sense roms? I don't see it anymore but it used to happen back when AOSP first starting coming out for the phone. It had to do with the multiuser support. It would leave all your Sense files but it would move the AOSP folder so you couldn't access them. Flashing a sense rom would let you access those files. I believe you can also access them by using a root explorer (es file also has a root option) and going up to /data/media you should be able to see those files and /data/media/0 should be the AOSP files.
jmalone1187 said:
So my One has been well above 20gigs of used space for some time, With an average of about 3 gigs of free space at any given time. I've checked my sdcard folder and it is about 5gb of space total (with downloads and everything else). There have been occasions where I plug the phone into USB and go to a folder quick and the files are ones I've never seen before (example in downloads folder the files are different then my actual downloads folder). I also have a directory 0, emulated, and legacy inside of Storage. These are exact synced copies of sdcard. Each taking up the same space (so 4x the actual amount of used space) and if I delete a file/folder for anyone of these directories it removes it from all including the sdcard.
Has anyone experienced this? is there a way to fix this without wiping the entire phone clean?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2158466 here is some info
Thanks for the replies! Will give this stuff a shot. Thank you

Mysterious files...?

Hi everyone,
Just rerooted my phone and installed Viper rom 6.2! I love it except the fact that there are some mysterious files on my phone, and 7.53 gigs worth! I am pretty sure that these are old installs of many different ARHD versions, but how do I delete them? I tried the super wipe script, but they still are there. It shows up under the "other" category in the storage menu in settings if that helps.
Thanks!
Closer...?
I just found some folders under storage that all contain the same files, /emuated/0 and /emulated/legacy/ so I did some researching. I realize that these are all linked to one another, but it still adds up to ~7 GB. The only way that it would get accounted for in the storage menu is under the "other" section right? I have tried to use root explorers to find the "other" files, but I cant find them. Is the /emulated folder taking up all this space?
whawhasiscumba said:
I just found some folders under storage that all contain the same files, /emuated/0 and /emulated/legacy/ so I did some researching. I realize that these are all linked to one another, but it still adds up to ~7 GB. The only way that it would get accounted for in the storage menu is under the "other" section right? I have tried to use root explorers to find the "other" files, but I cant find them. Is the /emulated folder taking up all this space?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
/emulated/0 and /emulated/legacy are 2 different mounting point linked to the same partition. They are not duplicated files, if you delete it, you will loose everything in both folders.
Maybe you have some nandroid backup taking space from your storage?
Hmmm... Just checked in TWRP for any backups but it said there weren't any, so could the two folders legacy and 0 be actually taking up data because they contain duplicated files?

MTP file delete from SD does NOT create free space

Hello folks.
I've been deleting files form SD card, using MTP. Deletion works without error, files are not shown any more.
However: The SD-card does not show any more free space as before the deletion.
Any suggestions?
Device Moto G 2. gen
stock rom 6.0
Hello folks.
I'm wondering if my question is not clear.
I have 30MB left on my SD, even though I did delete a bunch of stuff.
I really could use a hint - would like to copy some new content to it, once I get more "free" space...
Well, how have things turned out?
You know about the extra restrictions regarding external storage added in Android 6. You can barely use the SD card as it is, let alone have Windows do things to it.
Have you tried checking the storage with a file manager? ES File Explorer and X-plore could be granted some sort of write permission - see if the files are still there and delete them through your phone - although those two have a recycle bin option, make sure you uncheck it first.
And start using Temasek's custom ROM in the first place. If you're using the SD card as much as I do, that's the only reasonable option when it comes to Android 6.

"thumbdata3" and Available Space

Hi,
A few days ago I found out that there were two files called thumbdata3 in "DCIM/.thumbnails" that were occupying around 6 GB between the two. I deleted them, and did the workaround of creating folders with the name of the files. After doing that, the files haven't been created again, but the available space hasn't increased. Before deleting the files I had 750 Mb, and after deleting them I still have the same amount of space.
What should I do to recover the amount of space occupied by those files?
I have a Xperia Z3+ with a stock ROM (5.0.2), unrooted.
Did you delete the files with a filemanager that has a "Recycle Bin" and the files are still there ?
That's a really weird bug, but seemingly not so seldom that no one ever has seen it before
zacharias.maladroit said:
Did you delete the files with a filemanager that has a "Recycle Bin" and the files are still there ?
That's a really weird bug, but seemingly not so seldom that no one ever has seen it before
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I deleted the files with a file manager called "Solid Explorer" which doesn't include a "Recycle Bin." Moreover I don't have a SD Card, therefore I'm sure that the files were deleted from the internal storage.

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