Ok so I have an SGS for over a year now, with an external sd of 16GB and cyanogenmod 10 installed (this one). It's fantastic. But, recently I started having some storage problems. I couldn't update anything or download any new app or even take a picture. This seemed odd as I don't have that many applications installed and I keep all my big files on the external sd. So I started clearing caches and moving applications to the sd. Those solutions didn't last long.
Worse, ther weird part was yet to come. When I checked my settings >> storage, I found that there should be more than a 1.5GB of free space. But, If I checked my settings >> Apps >> On SD Card, I could see that there was only around 5MB of space left. Still, I found some old backup that I didn't need anymore, so I deleted that. hooray, there were now 500MB free to use. That is, until the next day when again, there was zero space to be used. I was shocked because during that time I didn't install anything new, I only took a small video of less than a minute, which by itself didn't weight more than 60MB of space.
Something was definetly up. Using File Manager I tried checking where all the data is, and I found that, to my amazement, in the DCIM folder, there was a folder named ".thumbnails" which took up 2GB of space. That is a lot. seaching around the Forums here, it seems I'm not the first one to notice this problem.
And the solution always seems to be "just delete the thumbnails". To me that seems a bit crass and not really a solution. I'm not tech enough to know what are the implications of simply deleting those files, and I'm not sure how long it's going to last anyway, before I need to do it again. So I'd like to know if there's some kind of fix I can install or some configuration I can change that would make sure it doesn't happen again. Or, if anything, some explanation in layman's terms why it's okay to simply delete those files. I'd like to mention that my phone is rooted, and I have CWM, Rom Manager and Terminal Emulator so I can use those if necessary.
AW: [Q] DCIM thumbnails taking over storage - need a fix!
That really is weird. Did you try to fix permissions in cwm recovery? I'm not sure it would even check that directory but it surely doesn't hurt.
Even if it works it will not cure your immediate problem. You will need to delete the thumbnail folder or the files in it. And here is why you don't have to worry.
Thumbnails are small files that store a preview of your images. They get created by your image viewer and are updated whenever it detects a change in the image file. When your viewer doesn't find a thumbnail it needs to read the whole image file, create a preview and show this. The created preview is then saved as thumbnail so it can be loaded next time the program needs to show the image.
In short: if you delete the thumbnails then they will be recreated next time your image viewer shows the images. So there is nothing to lose. You can safely delete the thumbnails.
JUST BE SURE THEY REALLY ARE THUMBNAILS AND NOT THE IMAGES THEMSELVES!
Related
Woops! I thought I had deleted some incriminating pictures from the gallery and with astro file manager BUT while looking through the SD card , I found old deleted pics!
How can I really delete pictures without them showing up in some cache directory?
I heard that in-order to do so you needed to email them to someone totally random. I can give you a totally random email address for this purpose if you like ;-)
I think there are Cache clearing apps on the market, last i remember anyways.
LOL...
Thats no good. It should delete without any apps...damn.
all it does is super compress them so they can be overwritten...
As you'll no doubt aware, most disks/SSDs, memory sticks, microSDs still contain most old "deleted" files, even if they aren't obvious, until where the data was has been overwritten by something else..
Couple of useful bits of code, TestDisk & PhotoRec can help recover lost stuff (or stuff someone thought they'd deleted (!!!!) )..
get them here..
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
NB Both these bits of software can completely screw machines/PCs/Laptops. whatever so BE CAREFULL!!!!!
I'm just about to try PhotoRec on the N1 and see what she finds... & will report...
My mate dodgy Rob found fascinating deleted SMS messages on his wife's (non-Android) 'phone.... the story of what he did about it is even funnier...
Cheers!
Lodger
Yup, Photorec can recover deleted stuff - .jpegs, .mov, .mpegs.. at least it did from my N1... - you have been warned ...
Running Ubuntu (Linux) & looking at the microSD card it reports 907 items on the microSD
Photorec recovered 3,724 items (!).. on the microSD and kindly copied them all to my Laptop..
If you really really need to feel confident something has gone then (I'm not an expert mind...) i understand you need to either..
a) (quick 'n dirty method ..) Fill up the apparently " empty" bit of the SD with garbage - eg some other .jpegs... or
b) To be really certain, re-format her: Several times... probably with several different file systems (FAT32, NTFS, EXT3...) , and don't chose the "quick" options...
Cheers!
Lodger
mine disappear after a soft reset
Damn.....not good. How am I suppose to receive rated r pics from girls and not have my gf find out!
iag48 said:
Damn.....not good. How am I suppose to receive rated r pics from girls and not have my gf find out!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
youre a horrible man
cymru said:
I heard that in-order to do so you needed to email them to someone totally random. I can give you a totally random email address for this purpose if you like ;-)
I think there are Cache clearing apps on the market, last i remember anyways.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I developed CacheMate for clearing cache. It would not work for this purpose. There are a few places where the images would be stored. When in the DCIM directory in /sdcard using Astro, make sure you are viewing hidden file and directories. You can do this by check the "Show Hidden Files" checkbox in Menu > Preferences > Look and Feel. You need to delete the pics from the .thumbnails directory too. If you really want, you can always cue them up in the gallery and delete them that way (long pressing on the pictures brings up the multiple select checkbox). Hope this helps a little.
Thanks for the help.
Re: get pics back from sd card
Actually, the easy way to recover deleted photos from sd card or hard disk is to use a photo software. You can google it and you will get many photo recovery softwares. But they are mostly not free. I have come across the same thing like you. Finally, I get my pics back with Yesterdata.
Kind Tips:
Don't save the recovered data on your memory card again. Find another place for it like on your computer or other external disk, for safety's sake.
iag48 said:
Woops! I thought I had deleted some incriminating pictures from the gallery and with astro file manager BUT while looking through the SD card , I found old deleted pics!
How can I really delete pictures without them showing up in some cache directory?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This should not happen as deleted pictures remains on the phone. But there are nexus photo recovery tool that helps to undelete photos on nexus phones. See this article: recover deleted photos on nexus phone
hope this helps.
Somehow I messed up setting up my wife's new Moto X. In the past I had some tasker tasks to transfer all the photos off our phones and onto our NAS every night. In setting up the task on her new phone I deleted a slew of pictures. I know the original photos are gone and I'll face the music on that one. However, if I go to camera and swipe to the left I can scroll through all the photos. I can't email or share any because the file is gone, but if I can see the photos there must be a low res image someplace on the phone still. Anyone know how to access these and possibly get me out of the doghouse? They're not in the DCIM folder at all. I poked around in the Android/Data folder a bit, but did not find them.
On the same note, is there a way to clean these out over time? Seems to me if I have a thumbnail of every photo ever taken it would eventually fill up the storage.
Thanks
Get an app like astro file manager, or root Explorer and go to storage then DCIM and your thumbnail pics should be there.
Sent from my XT1097 using XDA Free mobile app
clskier said:
Somehow I messed up setting up my wife's new Moto X. In the past I had some tasker tasks to transfer all the photos off our phones and onto our NAS every night. In setting up the task on her new phone I deleted a slew of pictures. I know the original photos are gone and I'll face the music on that one. However, if I go to camera and swipe to the left I can scroll through all the photos. I can't email or share any because the file is gone, but if I can see the photos there must be a low res image someplace on the phone still. Anyone know how to access these and possibly get me out of the doghouse? They're not in the DCIM folder at all. I poked around in the Android/Data folder a bit, but did not find them.
On the same note, is there a way to clean these out over time? Seems to me if I have a thumbnail of every photo ever taken it would eventually fill up the storage.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those are probably all cached. As for recovering them, I'm sure you can find them in the cache -- I don't know where they'd be saved (I believe there is a /cache partition but then there's also the possibility that the gallery caches those previews somewhere in /data/). It may be easier to to screen shot the ones you want.
EDIT: see above post - that's probably what you want
As for the cache growing, I'd imaging that the gallery app has some sort of maintenance. But there is always the option of using apps (I have SD Maid, personally) and/or periodically clearing the cache partition via a custom recovery
Thanks all. This was good info also. I ended up finding the files on my NAS which leads me to a whole other question which I will post seperately from this as it only related by symptoms.
So I had alot of photos hidden using QuickPic's ".nomedia" trick, and it worked surprisingly well...
Recently HTC's Sense ROM was getting too buggy for me, YT wasn't working, Twitch wasn't either.
So I switched to Cyanogen Mod 11, and so far its tons better.
However; I decided to back up my music / pictures before flashing the new OS...
I just selected the two folders, "pictures", and "music" hit CTRL-X and CTRL-V on my Desktop.
It started copying the pictures, then finished almost instantly. Then moved on to the music, which took almost 45 minutes.
I checked both the music / pictures folders on my desktop, music was completely there, but all the pictures were not there.
So I look at my phone, and they don't exist there either... restarted phone, checked for a LOST.DIR file... nothing there...
So I say, "screw it, lets just get my phone working again" and restart, go to bootloader, go to recovery, wipe then flash.
Both completed properly.
BTW: I am using TWRP.
Now here is where it gets strange...
After I get everything set up, I see that my drive space, well its the exact same. 18 GB free...
I still had all my (non-hidden) pictures, and all my music. (I did not restore them from my backup on my PC)
So I know that the pictures are still on my drive... but where!? LOST.DIR is no where in sight, and since CM11 comes with root file manager,
I searched for "lost" and got "lost and found" it was empty.
I have been searching all over the web for a solution, all I can find is these : "delete LOST.DIR and save space " and "recover photos you lost is in LOST.DIR"
Both state that LOST.DIR is in the SDCard, but the HTC One M7 has no SDCard.... It's got internal memory / usbdisk / root / system / etc.
Does HTC One M7 + CM11 (4.4.4) have LOST.DIR still?
So if you guys know of anyway I could get those photos back, it would be appreciated.
Also why did wipe not actually wipe the whole phone?
da_coder said:
So I had alot of photos hidden using QuickPic's ".nomedia" trick, and it worked surprisingly well...
Recently HTC's Sense ROM was getting too buggy for me, YT wasn't working, Twitch wasn't either.
So I switched to Cyanogen Mod 11, and so far its tons better.
However; I decided to back up my music / pictures before flashing the new OS...
I just selected the two folders, "pictures", and "music" hit CTRL-X and CTRL-V on my Desktop.
It started copying the pictures, then finished almost instantly. Then moved on to the music, which took almost 45 minutes.
I checked both the music / pictures folders on my desktop, music was completely there, but all the pictures were not there.
So I look at my phone, and they don't exist there either... restarted phone, checked for a LOST.DIR file... nothing there...
So I say, "screw it, lets just get my phone working again" and restart, go to bootloader, go to recovery, wipe then flash.
Both completed properly.
BTW: I am using TWRP.
Now here is where it gets strange...
After I get everything set up, I see that my drive space, well its the exact same. 18 GB free...
I still had all my (non-hidden) pictures, and all my music. (I did not restore them from my backup on my PC)
So I know that the pictures are still on my drive... but where!? LOST.DIR is no where in sight, and since CM11 comes with root file manager,
I searched for "lost" and got "lost and found" it was empty.
I have been searching all over the web for a solution, all I can find is these : "delete LOST.DIR and save space " and "recover photos you lost is in LOST.DIR"
Both state that LOST.DIR is in the SDCard, but the HTC One M7 has no SDCard.... It's got internal memory / usbdisk / root / system / etc.
Does HTC One M7 + CM11 (4.4.4) have LOST.DIR still?
So if you guys know of anyway I could get those photos back, it would be appreciated.
Also why did wipe not actually wipe the whole phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
U should search in SDCARD/DCIM/100MEDIA
There should your photos be.
Good luck!
Fain11 said:
U should search in SDCARD/DCIM/100MEDIA
There should your photos be.
Good luck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope, empty...
Well... this certainly was helpful :/
da_coder said:
Well... this certainly was helpful :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well it seems the "QuickPic's ".nomedia" trick" saved your photos to the user data partition and you erased them.
clsA said:
well it seems the "QuickPic's ".nomedia" trick" saved your photos to the user data partition and you erased them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
May I ask why it is the space in my partition is still taken up? Is that just a glitch?
da_coder said:
May I ask why it is the space in my partition is still taken up? Is that just a glitch?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
like how much space ? a few MB of several Gigs ?
Yes, I know how to use google, yes, I tried many things now and I don't know where else to look for help so I'm asking here, a place with many smart heads full of ideas.
I was doing pretty normal thing on my phone this morning, just trying to copy all the files from internal memory onto the PC. Of course I couldn't do that thanks to "Unspecified error" during copying some of the folders, including Downloads and DCIM. I managed to copy only some of the files from internal storage. I thought a reboot might help. And so the nightmare began. All the other files I wanted to copy disappeared from gallery and Total Commander. They must be on the phone though, as there is something on the phone that uses 2gb of memory. I did not delete them, the system just fails to see them. I already tried deleting all the ".nomedia" files, clearing cache and data from Media Storage app, disabling it, rebooting and enabling again but it was of no use. I'm helpless and I don't know what to do, why did android even do this? I lost a lot of photos and images and I'm really upset about that. Any ideas what to do? The phone is not rooted, never played with software in it, it's updated to 5.1
Download any File Manager from Play Store, check if the files are on the phone memory. If not, well, they are somehow lost. Maybe you cut-paste them onto your PC, and the files were deleted, but you got an 'unspecified error' on moving.
Thanks a lot for a response. I use Total Commander on every android phone I had, I can see that my files look like they disappeared completely, android just generated empty generic folders ("Pictures etc) after I cut off the previous folders along with their content so I saved a little bit that I could. On the other hand something is occupying 2gb of data but the phone refuses to show what, so there is a chance my files are there. After copying the whole content of the phone to the folder on desktop it just shows it weight few hundreds KB. I'll be trying to use some recovery software for android. The question is how did this happen at all? It had no right to happen, what if this happened to someone who has completely no idea about that stuff? Who's to blame and who's responsible for helping such a person? Motorola? Google? Anyway, this is the last phone with no micro-sd card slot I used. A memory card is the best backup
You COULD recover your files even if they were deleted if Android still had a mass storage mode. I don't think any of the data recovery softwares play nice with the MTP transfer that android offers. Of course, the SD card is infinitely better, but a rarity these days. I am sorry for your lost data. You seem like you did everything within your reach to get it back.
EDIT: Just to be sure, did you cut-paste the folders on your PC from phone, or just copy-paste. It might be possible for files to be deleted in cut-paste, if some error occurs in copy.
Thanks for contributing. It seems Google knows better then any of us what we need and there's no more Mass Storage option which gives free access to memory. Unfortunately I don't have that option. First I ensured which files are not affected by error by trying to copy them folder after folder. Then there were left files I couldn't copy, it was DCIM with most recent photos (unfortunately) and download where I kept lots of images with cool infographics found on the internet. I thought a reboot would help to get access to them and you know the rest. Files were there no longer. I'm seriously considering switching to Windows Phone, it seem it's too much to ask for a phone that just "werks" nowadays...I have a painful lesson to use memory card as well as cloud synchronizing but didn't give up yet, still trying anything I can I also wrote to Motorola with help request but I don't think they'll help me any better than people here, although it's more their responsibility to fix that stuff, the phone is barely 6 months old.
greetings community,
i have tried to search it, but being pro newbie, I found nothing. Is it possible to make this folder little bit lighter it takes 22gb of space, and my poor phone has only 64gb
I have rooted devices
thank you in advance
You can delete some apps using root file manager. I've use root explorer and have for years but nowadays there are times where it will not allow me to delete some apps (YouTube, chrome are a few this has happened to me on..) that my phone will NOT allow me to. And yes I have magisk and root explorer pro has root permission when this has happened. One way to get these apps off when this has happened to me is use another root file manager. Amaze file manager did the trick. I was able to delete apps I could not with root explorer. I'm BIG on not having useless bloatware on my phone so disabling apps is NOT my style. I usually save a copy by making backup and throw the backed up apks on my laptop or a USB thumb drive and delete whatever in case I end up deleting something that messes with my phone...Far as what can be deleted and what can't you can just discover for yourself. That's what I've done. I'm currently on a custom rom and I normally don't do much deleting unless I'm using the Google stock rom. If and when I do wipe more off stock I'll return and give you a list of what I did clear out. Just look in /system/app, /system/priv-app, product/app, /vendor/app with a root app and go to town. That's what I've always done. I believe TWRP for Android 11, the test build that bigbiff dropped about a month ago works now to make backups so that would be something to maybe do before hand in case you end up needing to restore your rom. On a few other devices I've owned people would sometimes make a thread on here for apps that can be removed and all and then list what they took off and what not to. I believe this Is what you are talking about.. If so hopefully it helps
Far as making system folder smaller and not meaning apps I believe it's possible but I think maybe you would have to repartition your device to do that and although it's possible it's dangerous. One wrong move and you have a paper weight doing that. I messed up my original Pixel XL because power went out while I was doing it before I was done and it was a goner. If anything I say here isn't right or there is more information about this please someone share who has more knowledge of this sort of thing. I would love to know as well. Good day/night to all. Cheers.
100kaa said:
greetings community,
i have tried to search it, but being pro newbie, I found nothing. Is it possible to make this folder little bit lighter it takes 22gb of space, and my poor phone has only 64gb
I have rooted devices
thank you in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@100kaa
You would be better off deleting excess files, trash, and photos that are already backed up. The system partition can be mounted and some files removed, but for the most part it is a minefield. Google has a fantastic new tool (since changing Photos retention rules) called "Takeout" that allows you to back up the contents of many parts of your phone and allows you do d/l it in compressed format directly to your PC. Check it out. OTHERWISE- If you simply must carry large files like movies, music database, pictures etc. then consider getting a USB-C OTG drive.
https://takeout.google.com/
This is why you get a phone with an SD card slot.
You then use the SD card as your data drive.
Only the apps and temporary folders go on the internal memory.
Next best thing is a flash stick or use cloud based storage which has downsides to it. Even if your internal storage is huge you don't want to store critical data there. I use about 64 of my 500gb of internal vs 340 of 500gb on the data drive.
If a large data base is on a large internal memory a data restore takes... forever. Most times the SD card is spared in OS crash and burns. Plus it can be used to restore the OS drive apps and settings.
Much of the above doesn't help you now but it could with future devices. All my PCs even my laptop are configured as dual drives. I learned a long time ago it works well, saves sweat and data.