From what I've read Android pretty much looks after itself but just wondering if there's any system maintainance that should be done from time to time? (i.e is defraging the SD card OK? Any other things worth doing?)
I've stuck with the stock 2.21 ROM but after installing JIT/Deodexed, debloating, overclocking, and scaleing the phone is running along sweetly. Thing is, about 2 1/2gigs of my 16G card is taken up with various System Recovery backups and I've got .apk files in various places. Can the .apks all be put into the same directory and if so where? I've backed the goaprev folder up to my PC and was going to delete all but the last backup from the phone. Basically, I don't want to do anything stupid now the phones nicely sorted out! Thanks in advance.
Since the seeking time on flash memory is so close to instant that fragmentation does not cause any noticable delays, I see no reason to defragment internal memory or my microSD card.
Furthermore, defragmenting a flash disk/drive, a device with a limited amount of writes, may actually shorten its life-span. In that sense, it may actually be a bad idea.
Backing up is always a good recommendation, when working with any electronic system
Thanks. Any idea if it's ok to move the .apk files? (Could be my OCD but I like things tidy!!) Also, wondering what the situation with ota system updates now I've hacked the phone?...leave well alone or okay? Cheers.
Move apk files - from where to where? Out of /system/app? You could move apks you are certain of you will never need, but the only thing you will gain is - at most - a few megabytes of free space. There's no real performance gain to be had, that I've experienced, just the possibility of losing hair if you remove/rename something you need.
As for OTA updates, you can rename FOTA.apk - that's the package that takes care of those updates.
Got several .apks in the root of my sd card- quite happy to leave them there, I guess and I should avoid ota updates...also is it worth clearing out caches once in a while? Just looking to keep my phone as streamlined and snappy as pos without screwing anything up! I'm new to android so still learning the ropes ! Thanks again
Ah yes, apk files are just installation files. You can move them where-ever you wish, though I would not move them to internal storage.
I do not clear out cache, as I prefer features I use regularly, to be cached already, instead of having to load them from scratch. I have not noticed any performance degradation because of it.
And since I do not share my phone with others, there is no privacy issue to speak of. I do not mind sharing my browsing/twitter/market/auto-complete behaviour with myself.
Related
Hey guys,
Been searching on this for a whle and haven't found the info I'm looking for.
How does the custom APPS2D actually work? By that I mean, what is it really doing? I know it's copying the app(s) to the partitioned ext2/3/4 area of the sdcard, but how does it know *what* part of the app to move as it seems something is always left on the phone.
I'm currently running AdamG's OpenDesire 3.0.5 (nice) and thanks to the script provided by msdl28712 in this thread here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=748529, I can see that APPS2SD is saving me "188MB". Pretty nice.
But my internal memory is still going down. I started out at about 148MB I think. I'm currently at about 115MB free. Of course, that's fantastic - but it sort of suggests that, even though I've downloaded loads of apps to the sd card, they will always leave some footprint/config/data on the internal memory of various sizes (as I can see it on my info page).
So really, I am still quite limited in the number of apps I can store. Even though I gave myself a nice big 4gb ext4 partition, I'll still hit a limit because of the footprint data left behind on the phone's int memory even after "copying to SD".
Is this right or am I way off?
Although I have no Actual knowledge of what you ask I will say this. The phone needs to be able to function if there is a SD card installed or not and therefore it must have info about the apps installed in the phone memory. I would imagine its very similar to windows and the windows registry. The registry will always be stored on the windows (Phone) storage and the program resources can be anywhere. Therefore when you install an app there will always be a small amount of phone storage required to link to and handle the operations of that program.
All in my opinion.
Some apps, not all, I've found in multiple places on my Eris.
I found it strange that the market wasn't consistently placing them in both places ( actually, that's a good thing, cause it would eat double the space ), but that led me to believe that the developer who wrote whichever particular app that was being stored in 2 location, wrote it to store to additional "backup" location ...
For example, say you download an item from the Android market, and it puts it in the "data\app" folder location. Well, I'd also find another copy in the root of the "cache\" folder ....
The way I found this, was I wondering where the heck all my memory was going, especially since I'd recently installed/uninstalled some various music player apps, but the space wasn't being freed up. I went digging through various folders looking for items, and low and behold, started finding the duplicately stored APK files. I started removing them, and I've monitored that files contents on a regular basis since, which has helped.
- JB
What A2SD? A2SD+, A2SD Froyo?
Found a nice explanation on CM Wiki... can't find it now though...
but there's always short explanation by MIUI Au..if you wanna give it a tryy
http://www.miui-au.com/faq/a2sd/
johnrbrown1968 said:
Some apps, not all, I've found in multiple places on my Eris.
I found it strange that the market wasn't consistently placing them in both places ( actually, that's a good thing, cause it would eat double the space ), but that led me to believe that the developer who wrote whichever particular app that was being stored in 2 location, wrote it to store to additional "backup" location ...
For example, say you download an item from the Android market, and it puts it in the "data\app" folder location. Well, I'd also find another copy in the root of the "cache\" folder ....
The way I found this, was I wondering where the heck all my memory was going, especially since I'd recently installed/uninstalled some various music player apps, but the space wasn't being freed up. I went digging through various folders looking for items, and low and behold, started finding the duplicately stored APK files. I started removing them, and I've monitored that files contents on a regular basis since, which has helped.
- JB
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all you are answering a quite old thread(hint: 8th august)
Second to clarify no, the app is not installed to several locations.. The apk file in the cache is just the one, that the market downloads in order to install it(hint: cache) upon installation the file is placed in the /data/app folder or in case you are using a2sd/a2sd+ it will be placed in /sd-ext/app(the phone still think it is in /data/app, but it wont take up space on the /data partition)
After the installation the downloaded .apk file is sometimes left behind, but as the /cache partition have a fixed size, this won't take up any space for app installs(/data) when the space is needed on the cache partition for another download or something else, the file is eventually deleted.
edit: for people, who want to know the answer to OP, please search I and many others have wrote it over and over again in this very forum.
I've a strange question that might or might belong in the development thread, but figured since it's a question, I'll try here first.
I'm using a Stock DeOxed Rooted Rom on my EVO.
I recently installed a few more apps and saw this pesky little warning about low on space.
When I went into my "SystemPanel" app to see how much space was left exactly and noticed that my /data folder only had around 30megs out of it's 428M available.
Ok.. time to delete some apps I thought, but then I noticed that my /system folder (Where I presume pre-installed apps live) had almost 1/3 of it's space still available (115 out of 350megs available).
So I'm wondering.....
Is there some method that I can use to install Apps directly to this folder instead of the standard /data that apps appear to go to when installed?
Is it as simple as moving the APK file with Root Explorer, or are there some under the hood items in apps that prevent this sort of thing?
I've a few rather large apps that I cannot move to the SD card due to widget problems and the like but would be perfect for the system folder if I can find a way to move them there easily.
Thoughts?
DroidGnome said:
I've a strange question that might or might belong in the development thread, but figured since it's a question, I'll try here first.
I'm using a Stock DeOxed Rooted Rom on my EVO.
I recently installed a few more apps and saw this pesky little warning about low on space.
When I went into my "SystemPanel" app to see how much space was left exactly and noticed that my /data folder only had around 30megs out of it's 428M available.
Ok.. time to delete some apps I thought, but then I noticed that my /system folder (Where I presume pre-installed apps live) had almost 1/3 of it's space still available (115 out of 350megs available).
So I'm wondering.....
Is there some method that I can use to install Apps directly to this folder instead of the standard /data that apps appear to go to when installed?
Is it as simple as moving the APK file with Root Explorer, or are there some under the hood items in apps that prevent this sort of thing?
I've a few rather large apps that I cannot move to the SD card due to widget problems and the like but would be perfect for the system folder if I can find a way to move them there easily.
Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
/system/app is where system apps are kept. If I remember correctly, any app can be installed into there, but you have to do through flashing an update.zip if I'm remembering properly. You may be able to take the apk that's in /data/app for the app you want to move and move it to /system/app, but I'm not sure if that will work properly or not. Someone who cooks ROMs might know more.
Also, you can partition your sd card and use true apps2sd with most ROMs. Its a little bit of work and will shorten the life of your card, but that gives you a lot more room if you need it.
I don't know that there's a way to move user apps to system. It's very possible there is a way, I've just never seen any posts about it. Apps 2 SD is usually the way to go.
ps. 30 megs?!?! Geez, how many apps do you have?
Sent from my SUPERSONIC
Easy peasy
First, use a true apk backup tool to backup e apk files you want to move. Titanium backup will NOT work because it compresses and distorts, and we need true apk files. I recommend file manager by adao team. Just go to applications, check what you want, and hit backup. Next, get the apk files on your computer by mounting sd and copying files from backups folder. You will lose all app data, but what can you do? Next, adb push the files to system app folder while in recovery mode (just say so if you don't know how to do this and i will tell you) and reboot. Done. Tell me if it works well.
By the way, 30 megs???
Doesn't froyo install to the sdcard if you tell it to?
I thought a2sd was obsolete
You can put apps there after changing the folder's permissions but I wouldn't recommend it. Just not a good idea to put regular apps there.
Just install them to your SD card instead
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
go into the android app manager and go through all your programs and click on move to sd card...
they will all still occupy some space on your nand, but not nearly as much.
Thanks for the advice, I thought it might not be as easy as moving them, oh well, just seems a shame for there to be over 100 megs I cannot do anything with.
I already had moved all I could to the SD card prior to posting this, but thanks for that advice as well, I'm sure others forget they can do that with Froyo.
As for the 30 megs I had left.. we'll it's back up to about 70 free which should be plenty for a while. (Remember we only have about 420 to start with).
Some of the big ones which could not be moved to the SD card are:
Swype (Deleted, took over 17megs)
TouchDown (12 megs.. must keep for tasks sync sadly)
Google Maps update (7.6 megs)
Documents to go (8megs)
A few various games that cannot yet be moved to the SD card at around 5megs each..
The rest are just lots of little apps.. I'm sort of an app junkie You should have seen my old Palm Centro... it was amazing!
According to Titanium, I currently have 194 'User apps', though I think a few are simply widgets, icon packs and the like.
Over the past 6 months I have collected a plethora of "****" on my SD card, lots of apps that left behind empty folders, logs, etc. I want to "fresh start it" and wipe everything off of it to eliminate all the folders that are no longer needed. Yes, I'm a app downloader/uninstaller, lol and as I'm sure some of you know leaves behind a trail of crap on your storage medium.
My question is, what does the SD card HAVE to have left on it (if anything) for the phone to operate correctly? I am Rooted/S-Off/SkyRaider 3.3.
Do i need to leave update.zip for instance on it, pictures i can i move to my Linux box, but I would hate to format the SD only to find out I just borked myself by removing a crucial system file the custom roms or rooting need.
I would also move my RomManager backup to my LB as well, just thought of that....
Anyone know?
i would leave clockwordmod folder, android.tether, android, and titanium backup folder..i mean thats what i have and would keep on my phone...I'm sure your setup is similar.
Thank you! =)
Damn good post. I went ahead and wiped my SD as well through clockwork. I saved my pictures and stuff to my desktop and then retransfered from there. What really sucks is organizing my pictures/music/media/ Sometimes when I switch ROM's I forget the camera auto saves pictures to internall emmc folder. What would be prime is to have it auto sync with a service like drop box.
so... we dont need :
"update.zip"
data
permissions log
blackberry? (never understood this being on my card)
etc...
i just formatted card via settings - storage - card format...
it took like 2 secs... and i have 3-4 gig of music on there...
seemed too fast for a format...
only 2 files it left on card was android.secure and lost.dir
i am re-adding some files i need, but wondering if your list above is the only "neccessary" files - obviously i'm adding my backups but i'm nervous cause theres a ton of files i'll be "missing"
i do have it backed up on 2 pc's, so i guess i'm covered...
hoping this helps - really just want a fresh canvas to work with...
Hi all, hopefully some of the more knowledgeable Android tweakers venture out of the Dev forums for a peek here and render some help. I know they get rather pissy if you post questions in there.
I figured I could free up some space if I removed stock apps I didn't use. I have a full licence for Docs To-Go so having QuickOffice pre-installed is a pain.
I followed a guide to move the .apk and .odex from /system/app to a spare SD card and looking at the files in total they combine to be about 6MB in size.
The funny thing is after a restart of my phone I'm no better off in terms of storage space...in fact I lost a couple of MBs!
So, for those in the know...what really IS the deal with the internal storage space?
Aitese said:
Hi all, hopefully some of the more knowledgeable Android tweakers venture out of the Dev forums for a peek here and render some help. I know they get rather pissy if you post questions in there.
I figured I could free up some space if I removed stock apps I didn't use. I have a full licence for Docs To-Go so having QuickOffice pre-installed is a pain.
I followed a guide to move the .apk and .odex from /system/app to a spare SD card and looking at the files in total they combine to be about 6MB in size.
The funny thing is after a restart of my phone I'm no better off in terms of storage space...in fact I lost a couple of MBs!
So, for those in the know...what really IS the deal with the internal storage space?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
there is few benefits to removing stock apps, stock apps are stored on the /system/ partition as you know, the device dosent use this for anything except the os, stock app and other system related items like, .lib files and the kernel, the portion we have as useable data is on the /data/ partiton, so removing apps from /system/ just free's up space on that partiton.
now here are two possible benifits, i removed most of the stock apps, and media files from system to free up enough space, i then did a nandroid backup, and flashed the alpharev sence hboot, giving my device there new partiton tables, it reduce the size of the system partiton, giving me a much bigger /cache/ and a bit more space on /data/ or if you dont want to remove as menny stock apps as me, you can just remove a few, see how much space is in /system/ then using the tut in development, modify you own partition table, removing the free space from /system/ and adding it to /data/, you need s-off to do all this
^ Is it just me or is that very complicated
Thanks AndroHero, that's cleared it up quite a bit.
Can't find a thread for this on the forum.
Been exploring the phone memory using file manager app, and found the folder system/app which contains a lot of the system apk and odex files and is 106mb.
Is it safe to move this to the SD card? Folder shows a last modified date of 16/04/2011 which is 3 months before I bought the phone.
This would free up a huge chunk of the phone memory and provide more room for messages & contacts which is what I'm hoping to achieve, as well as space for apps which won't move to SD card.
ginnerchris said:
Can't find a thread for this on the forum.
Been exploring the phone memory using file manager app, and found the folder system/app which contains a lot of the system apk and odex files and is 106mb.
Is it safe to move this to the SD card? Folder shows a last modified date of 16/04/2011 which is 3 months before I bought the phone.
This would free up a huge chunk of the phone memory and provide more room for messages & contacts which is what I'm hoping to achieve, as well as space for apps which won't move to SD card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if am not mistaken you need to be rooted for that...
Think you might be right on this one.
Tried moving one of the apks, and it copied rather than just moving it.
Also wouldn't let me delete.
I'm a bit of a noob (don't hate me), and not sure where to start with rooting, so a couple of questions (and apologies if they're really obvious).
1) I've read around a bit, and there seems to be a disagreement about whether rooting invalidates warranty? Is there a definitive answer?
2) If all I want to do is move stuff out of the phone memory, what is the easiest/safest way of rooting?
3) Does anyone know any way of making the files in the system folder not "read only"
ginnerchris said:
Think you might be right on this one.
Tried moving one of the apks, and it copied rather than just moving it.
Also wouldn't let me delete.
I'm a bit of a noob (don't hate me), and not sure where to start with rooting, so a couple of questions (and apologies if they're really obvious).
1) I've read around a bit, and there seems to be a disagreement about whether rooting invalidates warranty? Is there a definitive answer?
2) If all I want to do is move stuff out of the phone memory, what is the easiest/safest way of rooting?
3) Does anyone know any way of making the files in the system folder not "read only"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well far as i know - the answers to your questions would be in the following order :
1 - Well there might not be a definitive answer and that might depend on your providers policy etc -
2 - The safest way to move stuff is rooting and if you want to know more about rooting you can find multiple threads about that in the development section such as this one :
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1195275
But you need to make sure your device is "S-OFF" and not "S-ON" -
3 - I wouldn't recommend messing about with the default settings of system files etc -
i wouldn't recommend rooting, you can use APP2SD softwares to move your installed applications to SD without rooting, unless you really know what are you doing
I've been on Android for about 2 years now. Just bought the Samsung GSII for myself and my girlfriend got the Wildfire S.
She's only installed maybe 7-8 apps (if that), most have since been moved to the SD card, but she's constantly receiving a message about a lack of internal memory.
Is there any way to move all her apps to the SD card, or another way to free up some space?
** I'd like to do all this without rooting her phone. I'm a complete novice when it comes to modifying phones - only just got the hang of using different launchers.
I'm afraid that in order to move unmovable apps to the SD card, you will have to root the device.
You need to have a phone that is s-off in order to root, no other option as far as I am aware.
sent using tapatalk