Xperia T- Best approach to optimize storage for apps - Sony Xperia T, TL, TX, V

Hello people,
I am waiting for my Xperia T to be returned to me (I have an issue with the mic). The phone will come back clean as a whistle and I thought it might be a good chance to try and solve the only real problem I ever had with it. The 2GB data partition is kinda small and always gives me issues. How can I gain a little more storage room for my apps? I was thinking:
- remove SONY apps I don't use
- resize partitions
- install custom ROM that might repartition the memory
- link2Sd or similar
Any combination of these options would do. If you could point me in the right direction, I would be grateful.
Cheers!
Gabe

The optimal solution would be to have a common allocation for apps and userdata, but that is not (yet) possible for the Xperia T.
You can easily resize the partitions, though.

Thanks, I'll tale a look. Is the common allocation something OS related or decided by the manufacturers?

Related

Low Internal Memory - SMS Warning too

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

Database full: how to solve this probem?

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...

Why does the Link2SD application not link /data/data too?

From the Link2SD FAQ:
Link2SD does not link application's private data files that are located in /data/data directory, they remain in the internal storage. Thus each app you install will still have some data on the internal storage so you can still potentially fill up your internal storage even if you are moving all of your apps over.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why is this the case? There are other Linking apps which do move /data/data files. Why would Link2SD not do this?
I wish to ask this before I go bothering the application author. I figure there is some well-known issue here which I am not aware of.
I may have to switch linking apps because my /data part is getting too full, mostly due to Google's crappy maps and browser apps, which are horrifically fat.
Data Linking ?
jmomo said:
From the Link2SD FAQ:
Why is this the case? There are other Linking apps which do move /data/data files. Why would Link2SD not do this?
I wish to ask this before I go bothering the application author. I figure there is some well-known issue here which I am not aware of.
I may have to switch linking apps because my /data part is getting too full, mostly due to Google's crappy maps and browser apps, which are horrifically fat.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I too have this issue, and am now running low on internal space (mainly due to the huge data\data folder) ...
Can you tell me the name(s) of the other apps that provide linking the data folder ?
I believe app data isn't moved, because it will make your phone laggy as hell. Guess the dev chose for finding more space, but not at the cost of speed.
tommert38 said:
I believe app data isn't moved, because it will make your phone laggy as hell. Guess the dev chose for finding more space, but not at the cost of speed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This makes no sense at all. In many cases, newer SD cards are FASTER than the internal flash on older phones.
Please don't guess wildly about stuff you don't understand.
d_bizzzz said:
I too have this issue, and am now running low on internal space (mainly due to the huge data\data folder) ...
Can you tell me the name(s) of the other apps that provide linking the data folder ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
S2E does it, but from what I've seen, it's only for Cyanogen.
jmomo said:
This makes no sense at all. In many cases, newer SD cards are FASTER than the internal flash on older phones.
Please don't guess wildly about stuff you don't understand.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sustained write/read speeds don't tell the whole story, as you may know (probably not). You probably believe the more megapixels a camera sensor has, the better? Also, the phone must support those faster µSD cards. Seeing you've only been here for half a year and you've only contributed with a dozen posts, I can say for certain that you've never read any warnings for not moving app-data. It's not your fault.
Unfortunately, I noticed that all the new people coming here have no respect or decency and think they know everything already. Guess what: you don't know **** . So, like I already said before, drop the attitude.
Respectfully, you are simply wrong.
Modern SD cards are faster than the internal flash on older phones, which are the phones that need apps like Link2SD. I don't know about more modern phones.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=934087
Bonnie++ is the best way, that I know of, to benchmark a flash storage devices, but it's not for noobs
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1169910
I remember running bonnie++ against my Nexus One and a cheap 16GB card about a year ago when that above post was made and my SD card was faster than the internal flash in almost every way, and that was then.
Yes, my post count is low. XDA Devs is full of loud noobs who think writing a java app or rooting a phone makes them a leet technical resource. I've been writing software and managing unix systems for over a decade.
Well, sir, you go ahead and put your app-data on your µSD . Benchmarks are for [random word].
Did I also mention that somehow some new members are bragging about what they have achieved and are capable of, while they haven't made themselves useful in any way? If not, now I did.
Is there still no possibility to move also the data folder (e.g of games)? Most of my applications are rather small and most space is taken by the game data folders.
tommert38 is correct here.
Because there is no guarantee, that if your sdcard is fast, it'a also faster than your internal flash. There are more dependies than only the speed of the card. What are the specs of the nexus one sd-reader? This could be an popotentially barrier.
At least: Which size supports the nexus one for sd-cards?
I agree with the OP about this. If it is a worry about the speed, i'm sure mr. bulent akpinar can at least provide an option in the app to enable/disable saving /data/data to the link2sd partition. everybody happy!
here's a link to the original link2sd thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=919326 maybe the app author can take note of it as a suggestion for future updates
One other benefit of not placing /data/data on the SD card is for the case if your sd-ext partition fails to mount for some reason (e.g. failing a file system check). If /data/data was on the SD card, then most of your application settings will be gone, including for builtin apps like the launcher. It will look very similar to a factory reset.
With /data/data on internal storage, your settings will be still be visible in this scenario and it will only be the downloaded apps that disappear. This should be somewhat easier to recover from.
RealCrogge said:
Is there still no possibility to move also the data folder (e.g of games)? Most of my applications are rather small and most space is taken by the game data folders.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Consider all the risks and if you are willing to take them you might find this thread usefull. Just be sure you know what you are doing
LINK2SD v3.4.1 - No links data/data
apologies for posting to an aged thread, but just today LINK2SD has been updated to include linking of the /data/data
I'm already enjoying the new found space made available, it seems to work very well so far ...
d_bizzzz said:
apologies for posting to an aged thread, but just today LINK2SD has been updated to include linking of the /data/data
I'm already enjoying the new found space made available, it seems to work very well so far ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
May I ask you if you noticed a lag or performance slow down? I also love link2sd but I fear to upgrade to the latest version cause I don't want to compromise the reliability of my system, which so far, has been excellent.
I have read that moving the /data files could slow down the phone or cause overheating of the sd card. Actually I have a class 10 ultra II Sandisk.
Thanks for any report and opinion.
ik8vwa said:
May I ask you if you noticed a lag or performance slow down? I also love link2sd but I fear to upgrade to the latest version cause I don't want to compromise the reliability of my system, which so far, has been excellent.
I have read that moving the /data files could slow down the phone or cause overheating of the sd card. Actually I have a class 10 ultra II Sandisk.
Thanks for any report and opinion.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't done any benchtesting or anything but haven't noticed any slowdown or battery drain what-so-ever.
My phone runs just as good as before.
I only link my game apps to SD because I expect one day the SD card will fail (like most media storage devices) and most of my essential apps are un-linked and stored on the internal phone mem.
d_bizzzz said:
I haven't done any benchtesting or anything but haven't noticed any slowdown or battery drain what-so-ever.
My phone runs just as good as before.
I only link my game apps to SD because I expect one day the SD card will fail (like most media storage devices) and most of my essential apps are un-linked and stored on the internal phone mem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I have linked all my apps and it is now almost an year. I was very curious about the possibility to move the data too but was a bit on the standby, because if you check on the play store, there are some complaints. Now, I don't know what to do, maybe I'll give it a try.
Thanks for your kind reply.
ik8vwa said:
Thanks, I have linked all my apps and it is now almost an year. I was very curious about the possibility to move the data too but was a bit on the standby, because if you check on the play store, there are some complaints. Now, I don't know what to do, maybe I'll give it a try.
Thanks for your kind reply.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess some reviews may be on different phone models.
All I can advise is check the gppd & bad reviews and the phone model. Also to have a titanium backup of your older link2SD so you can roll back if needbe.
Worth just linking a few & see how it goes.
No complaints on my Galaxy S3, works fine & has done for the past 2 years
d_bizzzz said:
I guess some reviews may be on different phone models.
All I can advise is check the gppd & bad reviews and the phone model. Also to have a titanium backup of your older link2SD so you can roll back if needbe.
Worth just linking a few & see how it goes.
No complaints on my Galaxy S3, works fine & has done for the past 2 years
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I downloaded the new version (I have the plus option) but I don't understand how to move the data to sd since in the options it is specified that only future installs will be moved (if I flag the option).
Back to the original question. I use Mounts2SD for my Nexus One. I check to move Apps, Data, Dalvik, and Libraries. The rest I leave alone. I have no problems with space with this set-up. Speed is decent, I think the issues I have are probably related to the various custom ROMs I've been using but I can't be 100% sure.

FuFu 98swaponv5 mod - Internal storage swap!

Hello there! now that we have custom kernel, I want to share with you this Little trick I used in my old Motorola z6 when I used to develop xD
Due to the fact that memory cards have sometimes low data transfer rates, swapping on our devices sometimes is a Little bit slow... to solve the issue, I used to place a swapfile in the internal storage of the phone, wich has pretty fast data transfer rates... so I did this once again with my milestone, and the peformance is amazing!! I'm currently using CM7.2.4 with a 48mb swapfile placed inside /data...
Just wanted to share this with all the people of this community, I also modded the script written by FuFu, so the script insted of creating the swapfile in the sd-card, it creates it in /data
I won't post the modded script because I want FuFu himself to decide if the mod is OK, and make his own reléase! Just a matter of respect...
So that's it, try it out people, you're gonna be amazed....
no Problem, you can post your modded script here
i also tryed to use a swapfile on /data, but for me it wont work, if i try to use swapon on /data it sayes:
invalide argument
but i will take a look at your modded script and also i will include it in future updates
i think it may be very interesting for all users to get some extra performance
I'm not sure it is as good idea as it sounds first.
Memories based on flash technology are degrading when writing on it. (I know they are degrading anyway.)
Swapping means a lot of writing and reading and while you can easily buy a new SD-Card you cannot change your phone's internal memory.
Maybe my fears are baseless, but i don't wanna risk.
May someone with better knowledge correct me.
Plus, it is not possible to enable swap on yaffs filesystem "out-of-the-box" as they are incompatible.
I have CM7.2.4 now and three primary partitions on SD Card: Fat32, Ext2 and Linux Swap.
I installed 98swaponv5 after CM7.2.4 rom with OpenRecovery. Does 98swaponv5 have some settings or how I can know it's working?
Well it seems that I can multitask and change from Facebook to other apps and back and it doesn't reload, so I guess the swap is working.
But the default browser always reloads the page when I switch to the browser. Looks like all the other apps work great with the swap except the browser, I wonder why?
EDIT: Right now the browser doesn't reload anymore when I switch to it. I have rebooted and installed some apps, killed some apps. Looks like the Milestone just keeps getting better.
If you have Terminal Emulator installed, you can type free and it will show you the amount of total/used/free memory and in the row "Swap" the informations about swap.

[DEV] [DISCUSSION] Dual-boot for Mi A1 - I'm at an impasse

Approach 1 wins. Thread lock requested. Thanks all!
I've been working on a dual boot solution for the Mi A1 so I can easily switch between ROM development and my daily driver (backup/restore in TWRP is slow and inconvenient). I don't want to go the MultiROM route because it's complicated to adapt it for seamless/slot devices. Instead, I want to leverage the existing slot system to do it.
The only thing it needs is to logically separate the /data mount for each slot. Then we can just just dualboot two ROMs by switching slots in Recovery.
But I can't decide on which one of these two approaches is best. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages.
Approach 1: Split into userdata_a and userdata_b
Advantages:
Will be compatible with everything. The Android OS can automatically mount the right userdata for the current slot and it will all be abstracted away.
Easy to implement. In fact I've already done it on my own device.
Disadvantages:
The space of userdata will be halved between each slot. I could make this customized, i.e. let the user decide if they want to split evenly, or give slot B only e.g. 6GB, 8GB, etc. and the rest to Slot A.
Each slot will have its own Internal Storage (i.e. MTP storage). This could be confusing.
Personally, I am leaning towards this one.
Approach 2: Shared userdata with bind-mount
Advantages:
Practically no loss of space. Both ROM slots will share the userdata partition; it will instead have a "virtual" separation rather than physical.
One combined Internal Storage for both slots.
Disadvantages:
Complicated. Would take more work to set up and maintain.
Potentially fragile and incompatible. I don't know if encryption will work across vastly-different ROMs, and some low-level stuff might break because /data is a bind-mount instead of a block-device mount.
TWRP functions like Backup or Factory Reset will always include the Userdata of BOTH slots. I don't think I could really do anything about this. The best I could do is add slot-specific options into Tissot Manager GUI, but if I wanted to replicate TWRP backup functionality on a per-slot basis it would take a LOT of work.
----------------------------------
As I said, I'm leaning towards Approach #1. The main issue of space is diminished by the fact that I keep as much things as I can on microSD, and I could make the Tissot Manager partition tool have configurable sizes for the second slot - I can certainly afford to lose ~6GB from my 20GB to give to Slot B since the few GB I use on internal Storage is all just app stuff or ART cache anyway.
But I'd like to hear what others think, and if there's any advantages/disadvantages I hadn't considered.
Poll added.
Cheers.
If approach 1 is already implemented, why not go with that for now?
Edit: May sound dumb, but couldn't it be possible to have 4 partitions 2 virtual and 2 real, aka 2 A/B partitions? If that would be the case, I feel like it may be better than just approach #2, albeit much more complicated and unpractical compared to approach #1.
GamingDevilsCC said:
If approach 1 is already implemented, why not go with that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm currently sleep deprived a bit but the more I think about it, the more #1 seems best haha.... I might have been too hasty in opening this thread lol
Yeah approach 1 would be the best option
Indeed. Thanks guys, thread lock requested.
Thread closed by OP request.

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