How to Clean Up/Format Internal Memory? - One (M8) Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey Everyone ive been installing new Roms and testing new ones left and right, and for Some reaosn my Internal Memory Is pretty Much Full, so my question" Is it Ok to Format my Internal Memory thru Recovery and just flash a new rom after? or is it going to cause problems? I just want to ask before i attempt doing it, Because i cant really afford to brick my friends Phone lol. Thanks Everyone in Advance for your Answers/Opinions, XDA is the Best website/Forum For Anything phone related and great People who always help.

Not sure if you are posting from your phone, but the random capitalization and lack of punctuation make it a bit difficult to read your post.
To answer your questions . . . . it depends.
If you store your nandroid (TWRP) backups on internal storage (which is the default location), those will be gone if you wipe internal storage. Sounds a bit obvious, but you may be surprised at how many folks don't realize this.
Also, if the ROM you want to flash is on internal storage and you wipe it . . . its gone. Again, this may seem obvious but you'd be surprised.
Now of course if you store your nandroids and ROM zips (that you intend to flash) on your removable SD cards, none of the above matters much. Or alternately, wipe internal storage, then put the desire nandroid and ROM.zip back on internal storage after the wipe.
A lot of residual "junk" does get left behind from old ROMS, so its not a bad idea to wipe internal storage once in a while, as long as you realize the items I've mentioned above.
But on the other hand, this stuff usually won't fill up the whole storage. Sometimes, folks fill up there storage unknowingly with nandroids and ROM zips. They take up a lot of space (especially Sense ROMs), as in 2 GB or more each. Again, this may be obvious to you, but you'd be surprised at how many folks make this mistake. Clearing some storage space in those cases is as easy as getting rid of extraneous nandroids and ROM zip, or moving them to your computer.
Obviously any personal files stored on internal storage will be lost, if you wipe this partition. Seeing as you mention its your friends phone, you may want to verify that your friend doesn't have anything they want to keep, before you wipe it.
As far as a brick, its not going to happen. Wiping in TWRP is safe. Its tough to actually brick this phone if its s-on. And you won't do so by flashing ROMs or wiping internal storage. Render the phone unable to boot into OS, yes. But that is not a brick, and usually easy to recovery from.

Related

[Q] Using factory restore and erasing sd card contents within a custom rom

I am curious what the results will be if I use the factory restore within a custom rom . I'm currently running AOKP M5.1 . I am wondering if there are any unsightly ramifications to booting into TWRP and doing a factory restore and erasing the SD card contents? I would like to do this to free up as much space as possible and remove the left over remnants of over 20 flashes and a plethora of app installs. One question I have is will TWRP wipe its own directories?
Would this be better from a stock perspective? The only time I wiped my SD card I was on stock and I really don't care to experience any directory malfunctions or card mounting issues. Doing this within a custom rom will my device still know its a kindle lol?
Edit: I know that this will not restore to 6.3.1 I'm just looking to run AOKP in a clean fresh environment including the SD card thanks for any input
Reserved
Thepooch said:
I am curious what the results will be if I use the factory restore within a custom rom . I'm currently running AOKP M5.1 . I am wondering if there are any unsightly ramifications to booting into TWRP and doing a factory restore and erasing the SD card contents? I would like to do this to free up as much space as possible and remove the left over remnants of over 20 flashes and a plethora of app installs. One question I have is will TWRP wipe its own directories?
Would this be better from a stock perspective? The only time I wiped my SD card I was on stock and I really don't care to experience any directory malfunctions or card mounting issues. Doing this within a custom rom will my device still know its a kindle lol?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You cannot wipe recovery from inside recovery, only the TWRP backups on your sdcard will be lost. The sdcard is on its own partition apart from recovery and system files.
Backups are backed up on my pc also the only time I have used factory restore is when I was going to flash something new. The idea of this seems simple I just don't want it to be problematic since I won't be doing a new flash.
Thepooch said:
I am curious what the results will be if I use the factory restore within a custom rom . I'm currently running AOKP M5.1 . I am wondering if there are any unsightly ramifications to booting into TWRP and doing a factory restore and erasing the SD card contents? I would like to do this to free up as much space as possible and remove the left over remnants of over 20 flashes and a plethora of app installs. One question I have is will TWRP wipe its own directories?
Would this be better from a stock perspective? The only time I wiped my SD card I was on stock and I really don't care to experience any directory malfunctions or card mounting issues. Doing this within a custom rom will my device still know its a kindle lol?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Factory data reset from a ROM will wipe the /data partition. It's effectively the same as "Wipe -> Factory Reset" from TWRP.
On the other hand, if you do the equivalent from the stock software, it too will wipe the /data partition, but it will also take the SD Card contents along with it. I learned this the hard way.
kinfauns said:
Factory data reset from a ROM will wipe the /data partition. It's effectively the same as "Wipe -> Factory Reset" from TWRP.
On the other hand, if you do the equivalent from the stock software, it too will wipe the /data partition, but it will also take the SD Card contents along with it. I learned this the hard way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would like to flush the SD for a clean start music video and apps can all be restored before I stick both feet in I want to make sure that it just gives me the spring cleaning that I'm looking for
Well here's what I decided to do I figured since I had a working rom on I would do it all from the factory restore in the rom. So I clicked factory restore and erase SD card after rebooting it prompted me to set up my Google account. After it restored my account and all my apps downloaded and installed, I moved some files to my SD that I wanted back on and did a backup through twrp. All said and done I was very excited to see that I had 4 gigs of remaining space on my SD card so I managed to clear out 2 gigs of excess clutter from what I have done on my kindle. The only downside I have noticed so far is when hooking my kindle to my computer it shows G: removable disk . ADB drivers are good but its no longer listed as kindle under my computer which isn't the first time I've seen this.The way I figure no big deal adb works and I can access my SD card contents on my computer how its listed is irrelevant.
Drivers driver drivers windows sucks lol at this point they are functioning so I will not be trying to reinstall them. Later I will try another restore and wipe my SD through twrp to see if that changes probably won't make a difference I'm just gonna do it for kicks and giggles
On a device that only has 5 gigs of storage regaining 2 more gigs of play room is substantial. There was more clutter than what I anticipated I was only hoping for a half a gig and I'm certainly thrilled by 2

[Q] Wiping ALL data?

Galaxy s3 T999 tmobile phone.
Liquid Smooth ROM. - Amazing rom btw. I cant thank those folks enough for their brilliant work
TWRP for recovery
Ive done numerous dalvic/system/cache/data wipes through twrp in preparation for new roms. But my INTERNAL 16 gb SD card always shows that i have around 12GB USED. thats with no personal apps installed
Heres my question. How do i remove all unnecessary data thats hogging up space. I want a CLEAN space to work with!
I do have 4 twrp recovery files (4gb worth of data?) stored in there. Im assuming the system uses about 3 gb's. plus the gapps and liquid rom are only 194 mb combined. So that accounts for maybe 7 or 8 gb
So how do i do a totally clean wipe without losing twrp, recovery files AND root!
the only wipe option ive never used is USB-OTG. (USB On The Go?) No idea what it is or what it does. so i never messed with it. Ive read that it acts like a driver of some sort to allow usb devices to communicate with each other..
Ive also never gone into the Format data section of twrp out of fear that i might wipe the wrong things and render my phone useless
One article i read said that i might have to revert back to stock? im hoping thats not so. And do a factory wipe. Is that different from TWRP's functions? Im assuming that i would lose root.
they said din flash to stock
Odin master clear (or wipe SD from settings)
*2767*3855# on the phones keypad ...(i think codes in general only work on stock TW)
Do i have to format the sd card? would i lose important partitions that would delete the recovery system?
any ideas? i considered opening a partition wizard app to see the different partions on the internal sd card.
I'm no expert on this, but I think that Liquid Smooth has a place in Settings to let you view the space allocation of the storage in your phone and external SD card.
Go to Settings > Storage (or something similar) and take a look at how much space is being allocated of each of the different types of data. It might give you a better idea on what might be taking up that additional ~4GB of space.
If you can, provide us with a screenshot of the Storage screen. If not, you can just type them here so we can better understand what might be going on.
Back up internal sdcard to your computer.
Wipe data/factory reset.
Wipe /data/media.
You can do this through TWRP. Won't lose anything except contents of your internal sdcard. Which is why you back it up first.
Don't forget the formatting of the filesystem does this. Just like windows a 100gig hard drive formats to a smaller amount.
Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

[Q] Cleaning my internal memory before ROM flash

I flash a lot of roms on my phone. Recently I noticed that there was a lot of left over programs and apps on my internal memory. I have nothing on the phone I want to keep that is not already backed up via TitaniumBackup.
What I would like to do, is wipe everything that I can without messing up partitions or Mount points or the needed stuff in ./data/media so I can flash a new room on a totally clean phone (except for the nessasary files needed like the data/media stuff and recovery stuff ect..)
Normally when I flash I do this: (in TWRP)
1. Nandroid backup
2. Wipe/factory restore
3. Wipe data and system again
4. Flash new ROM
5. Wipe devlik/cache
6. Reboot
When I finally get to the desktop I start up root explorer and look around my internal memory. This is were I still see a lot of old apps still sitting there. I want them gone. I'm afraid to wipe/format internal memory while in TWRP because I will lose everything right ? Even the stuff that is needed to boot the phone to recovery.
Any suggestions ?
Thanks
T-Mobile Samsung G S4
SGH-M919
TWRP v6.x.x.x
16 gig micro sd-card
Go in twrp and click wipe, advanced, and click everything. after wiping Mount the phone to PC via twrp and move the rom and kernel to sd card. Unmount then do the steps you usually do to install a ROM, including wipe.
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Thibor69 said:
I flash a lot of roms on my phone. Recently I noticed that there was a lot of left over programs and apps on my internal memory. I have nothing on the phone I want to keep that is not already backed up via TitaniumBackup.
What I would like to do, is wipe everything that I can without messing up partitions or Mount points or the needed stuff in ./data/media so I can flash a new room on a totally clean phone (except for the nessasary files needed like the data/media stuff and recovery stuff ect..)
Normally when I flash I do this: (in TWRP)
1. Nandroid backup
2. Wipe/factory restore
3. Wipe data and system again
4. Flash new ROM
5. Wipe devlik/cache
6. Reboot
When I finally get to the desktop I start up root explorer and look around my internal memory. This is were I still see a lot of old apps still sitting there. I want them gone. I'm afraid to wipe/format internal memory while in TWRP because I will lose everything right ? Even the stuff that is needed to boot the phone to recovery.
Any suggestions ?
Thanks
T-Mobile Samsung G S4
SGH-M919
TWRP v6.x.x.x
16 gig micro sd-card
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have your TiBu backups, nandroids, and ROM zips, pictures, videos, etc already on your SD card; there is no harm in formatting your internal memory. You won't lose recovery, you won't have a problem with booting, nothing of that sort.
When I was running SynergyRom on my S3, wiping Internal memory was usually Always suggested because of the reasons you mentioned.
Move your Nandroid and files you want to flash to your extSdCard card for obvious reasons.
I have TWRP 2.5.0.2 as my Recovery, which has been running without issues for months.
Enter Recovery:
Press -
Wipe
Format Data
As a safety valve, you'll be asked to Type in Yes to continue this Internal wipe.
You'll retain the partitions you mentioned.
I think the above will get you to where you want to be.
You can always double check afterward as you've already done before.
Biker1 said:
When I was running SynergyRom on my S3, wiping Internal memory was usually Always suggested because of the reasons you mentioned.
Move your Nandroid and files you want to flash to your extSdCard card for obvious reasons.
I have TWRP 2.5.0.2 as my Recovery, which has been running without issues for months.
Enter Recovery:
Press -
Wipe
Format Data
As a safety valve, you'll be asked to Type in Yes to continue this Internal wipe.
You'll retain the partitions you mentioned.
I think the above will get you to where you want to be.
You can always double check afterward as you've already done before.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just wanted to say good question and responses. Helpful.

CWM not backing up data

I'm trying to do my first custom ROM flash via CWM, but every time I've tried to backup it says I can't backup /data. I'm not sure if it may be related to a size issue? I have a 16gb phone with 6.21gb free, and a microSD with about 3.7gb free when formatted. If this is the issue, could I possibly backup to my PC? Also, is it normal to have 6.26gb of system memory used, and if not, how can I find out what's taking up the extra space? Thanks for any help, and bear with me, I'm still learning lol.
bump

Can’t move or make ,Wright anything on my internal storage

On my htc m8 eye I unlocked the. Boatloader and installed twrp after that I restored a backup but now I can’t write anything or move anything or download any file on internal storage ! What should I do now?plz help me. And sorry for my bad English
Topu baksh said:
On my htc m8 eye I unlocked the. Boatloader and installed twrp after that I restored a backup but now I can’t write anything or move anything or download any file on internal storage ! What should I do now?plz help me. And sorry for my bad English
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, Topu baksh...
Just a thought, but where did you perform the TWRP restore from? In other words, where is your TWRP backup located...
...on an external SD-Card or on the devices own internal storage?
The reason I'm asking is because TWRP backups can get pretty big and can consume huge amounts of storage space, and if it's located on your devices internal storage, it's entirely possible you may have just simply run out of space, and which may explain your inability to copy anything or download anything.
Your device would be too full to do anything with, and all because your TWRP backup files are occupying most of your devices internal storage.
-----------------------------------
Anyhow, as I say, just a thought ~ might be worth looking into, and with perhaps a view to deleting your TWRP backup, maybe.
Good luck and hope this helps?.
Rgrds,
Ged.
p.s. - your English is perfectly fine?.
You sure you restored a backup intended for the "eye"?
You can try the option in TWRP "Wipe" section to "Format data". This sometimes resolves issues with data corruption preventing you from writing to the internal storage.
But you will still need a valid stock ROM (TWRP backup) to restore.

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