Confused by file system - Samsung Galaxy Nexus

When I plug my phone into my PC I can see a file on my SD card called 'Android' with my game data.
But when I open ES File explorer on my phone there is another file called 'android' (small 'a') which appears empty, but I can't delete it.
When I go up to root /data/media I can see what looks like my SD card with the 'Android' and 'android' folders but there appear to be duplicate files while others are missing or moved.
I think after flashing new kernels this week there are duplicate files being created. I often have to re-download game data after flashing a kernel and I seem to be losing a lot of SD memory.
I just want to know which folders should I delete?

Using superuser permission should allow you to delete the "android" folder or file. If ES Explorer don't work, try Root Explorer or do it in adb if you know how.
In linux file systems, A and a can be two different files or folders.
Or you can reflash google factory image and that will wipe the entire internal storage.

Thanks.
I managed to delete both the Android folders.
Had to re-download all my game data but I've ended up with about 3 gig more memory.

Related

[Q] where are market downloads stored?

gents,
I wonder in which folder the downloaded market apps go before the get installed.
Additionally the question rises if one can delete those files or do they get deleted automatically after installation??
HorNet505 said:
gents,
I wonder in which folder the downloaded market apps go before the get installed.
Additionally the question rises if one can delete those files or do they get deleted automatically after installation??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They are run from the location they are downloaded to on the phone. So when you download a file from the App Market it will be stored in the folder, installed and run from said APK. If you move it to SD it moves the file from internal to external. If you uninstall the file if it sits on the phones memory it will automatically delete the file.
Not quite. They are stored on the cache partition. They are not always deleted, but they do not take up app space as the partition size is fixed. And when the space is needed on the cache partition, eventually they are deleted.
Is the cache folder visible to me? What's it called.
I got the problem that, despite all my apps are moved to my SD card, the updates fill up my internal memory. I understood that the updated apps are as well moved to the SD card. This is my default setting as well i
Downloaded apks are gets stored in /data/app. You need ROOT access to locate them. Root Explorer will let you access these files.
ip2op01 said:
Downloaded apks are gets stored in /data/app. You need ROOT access to locate them. Root Explorer will let you access these files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Let me make a correction here: installed apps are stored in /data/app (requiring root for write permissions). System apps are stored in /system/app (requiring S-OFF or Recovery mode for write permissions). Downloaded apks are stored in /cache/download, which is why in partition tables, where the cache partition is >5 MB, you should symlink the download folder to a folder in the sdcard, to be able to download apps larger than 5 MB. Otherwise the market will return the error "Insufficient storage available." or something like that.
Not that all of that really matters, seeing as this is a year old thread...
Please use the Q&A Forum for questions Thanks
Moving to Q&A

All files Disapeared

Hello,
I Have a Big problem...
On my nexus, Since I copy ont file onto the SD, all other files are Disapeared....
I tryed to use recevey softwares, but oly work with mass storage cards....
Somebody have an idea how can I restore my files please ??
xTremePower said:
Hello,
I Have a Big problem...
On my nexus, Since I copy ont file onto the SD, all other files are Disapeared....
I tryed to use recevey softwares, but oly work with mass storage cards....
Somebody have an idea how can I restore my files please ??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you offer any additional info? Have to used Root Explorer or a similar app to confirm without a doubt the files are gone and not just in a different place? And I am slightly confused when you say "move to sd card" because internal storage and SDcard on this phone are the same thing since there is no EXT..
I copyed files as usualy from computer to the nexus
After the copy (I copied the new google apps zip) this zip is ont the storage, but all other 12Go of data in the card are disapeared
I try to find it with windows, root explorer, es file explorer, I tryed android undelet tools and windows undelet tools... noone can see the MTP memory of the nexus .......
And I disabled the upload to picasa..
xTremePower said:
I copyed files as usualy from computer to the nexus
After the copy (I copied the new google apps zip) this zip is ont the storage, but all other 12Go of data in the card are disapeared
I try to find it with windows, root explorer, es file explorer, I tryed android undelet tools and windows undelet tools... noone can see the MTP memory of the nexus .......
And I disabled the upload to picasa..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have fast usb charge enabled? If so, try disabling that.
all files in /sdcard disappeared
The same thing just happened to me. I copied 386MB of music to /sdcard/Music and all appeared to be fine. I used Windows7 x64 Explorer over USB mounted as MTP.
I noticed that I could not copy some files back to Windows from Nexus. After messing around with that for a while I used ES File Explorer to check out /sdcard. Only a few folders were there, as if /sdcard were newly created. I could still see all of the lost folders in Windows Explorer.
Am I screwed?
TIA!
This is from a corrupt MediaStore DB. I ran into something similar when moving files to my phone over WiFi using File Explorer. Afterwards only a handful of folders showed up when connected via USB. Only way to fix it is to reset the DB. Settings > Apps > All > Media Storage > Clear data/cache. Reboot. It should completely rebuild the DB after the boot, and things should show up correctly again.
osm0sis said:
This is from a corrupt MediaStore DB. I ran into something similar when moving files to my phone over WiFi using File Explorer. After only a handful of folders showed up when connected via USB. Only way to fix it is to reset the DB. Settings > Apps > All > Media Storage > Clear data/cache. Reboot. It should completely rebuild the DB after the boot, and things should show up correctly again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That did not get all my data back, I must have done something else while trying to fix it. The good news is that this fixed one of my next questions: How do I reset the Google Music album art? The suggestion above fixed that wonderfully.
Thanks!

[Q] es file explorer deleted my files

So I was trying to move my files from whatever directory they were in to my storage since I had just gone from tw to miui so the directory change mess up thing happened. It would go and overwrite the new empty same name folders but nothing would show up I go back to the directory they were in and everything was gone. Restart my phone and some showed up and managed to transfer only a small portion of my pictures and some other files. My music files and some of other folders I tried transferring again and it would seem like everything went well but they wouldn't show up in my storage folder and it disappeared from the original folder it was in. They got deleted. I had about 3gb of free storage now I have 9. Sigh. So is there anything I can do to recover my files? I'm about ready to toss this phone out the window I've never had problems with es until now.
I know that there are file recovery programs for Windows and macs. You'll need to Google it because I can't remember what it's called.
I think is Recuva.
Sent from my SPH-L710
You can use data recovery tool to recover deleted files from ES file explorer. See this step by step ES file explorer deleted files recovery tutorial.
hope this helps.

cant find my CWM Nandroid backups ?!

Ok so I just rooted my S3, 4.4.2 Boost Mobile phone. Worked fine. No problem rooting it. Made a backup using CWM and then I installed Philz recovery and also made another back up. In recovery it shows BOTH backups, and says they are located in
/sdcard/clockworkmod/backup
then in individually named folders of the backups.
HOWEVER, when I look using ES File Explorer, I only have the clockworkmod folder, and it does NOT contain any other folders, no "backup" folder at all.
Ok, so let me try the Aroma File manager. Same thing if I go to /sdcard/0/clockworkmod/ there are two very small files:
".last_install_path", and ".recovery_version".
HOWEVER, I am able to navagate to /sdcard/clockworkmod/ and THERE I find the backup folder with my two backups.
Why can I not find this folder from android? Even when I use STORAGE ANALYZER and tell it to look at the system parttions and even when I use ES FILE MANAGER and tell it to do an SD CARD ANALYSIS, it doesn't show these backups. So I have copied a backup to the download folder of the sdcard and am hoping to copy it over to my PC before flashing a new ROM.
NOTE: I do NOT have an external SD Card installed yet.
I just thought this is super strange. ?? Anyone have any idea? Thanks.
Now after booting into Android and looking into the folder I copied to /Download, the folder is empty.. !?!? I'm SO LOST right now....
It SHOWS that space is missing on my device so these files DO EXIST SOMEWHERE but SOMEHOW it's as if they are being hidden... is it knox???
Ok if I use "MY FILES" I can see the folder that I copied to /Download and the files in it, but NOT if I use ES File Manager, and NOT if I use Root Explorer. However even MY FILES still shows clockworkmod dir as empty!?
Ok so it turns out it has something to do with a permissions issue. Why is that? I run Storage Analyzer and when I try to click on the recoveries I copied to /Download it tells me that I don't have permission for that folder. Do I need to run some kind of FIX PERMISSIONS on this? Is there such a thing for the S3?
I found someone else talking about this same thing and looks like they solved it. here is the link:
http://forums.androidcentral.com/google-nexus-7-2012-rooting-roms-hacks/229739-where-my-rom-manager-backups-android-4-2-a.html

[Q] Can someone explain to me how storage works? What is

I decided to upgrade to Lollipop after holding out for awhile.... before I did though, as I knew I was going to run an RUU so I wouldn't have any problems with the OTA, I copied everything in my "storage" (all folders) to my windows laptop desktop via USB.
After upgrading, I copied it all back, making sure not to over-write anything.
What is strange is when I copied all my folders to my laptop initially, I didn't see a Download folder... which I expected to see. But after looking through the folders I had copied, I saw a folder called storage, and in that folder another called emulated, and then another called "0". In that folder I finally saw my Download folder.
I didn't think much of this at the time, however, when I look at storage from Root Explorer, I note there is a new Download folder at the "root" level of storage, but the storage/emulated/0 path is still there as well.... and following it takes me to my old Download folder....
So...to get back my original folders and contents before I upgraded to Lollipop, I have to copy over every folder in this path up 3 levels. i.e., from /storage/emulated/0/storage/emulated to /storage/emulated.
What is going on? Why is there an "0" and a "legacy" if I go up one level from /storage/emulated/??? Why did my old Download folder end up where it did?
I had this exact same thing in my mind.
Why is there such a folder ?
My phone storage was almost full and I found out this folder is taking up whole space.
I cut the storage folder and pasted it into memory card
now all my downloads go to memory card (mmc:storage/emulated/0)
+1
I have also this folder that takes a lot of internal memory space.
I experiment one thing:
I have 1 game that takes 2Gb of data and I have moved it to sdcard memory (using Android-M feature : move app from internal to sdcard )
I saw in this directory (emulated/0/ ) the 2Gb of this game. ????? So, I tryed to copy/paste this data to sdcard, in order to free internal memory space. But I loose the game's configuration.
I was thinking that moving app from internal to scard, the data of the app also move, isn't it ?
I need help to understand that ...
Nang06

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