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...
Ok, I have a 16gig card, and had about 250 MB free, went to check, and over the space of a few days, not having taken many photos or videos, or downloading much, I was down to like 35MB, looking through my SD Card, I have loads of files and folders which I don't know what they are, some of them very small (CDAInfo on Root of SD Card, MEMSTICK.IND on Root of SD Card, etc. etc.) but some of them are quite large.
Also, looking through my Xperia Play games launcher, I have many apps that are doubled, and clicking on both opens it, so it's not just an empty container. Looking at my folders on the SD Card (.android_secure), I have things like flashplayer-1.asec and flashplayer-2.asec, each one is 16MB, and I have many of these duplicates for different apps and games. Now, I think that the .android_secure folder is used for when you move your apps to the SD Card, and I'm assuming that this occured when I flashed a new rom and reinstalled the apps (the data was created on the phone memory and then when I went to move it over, it created the 2nd version) but what I want to know is, how to AVOID this happening when I flash a new Rom, or basically, how do I avoid things like this happening.
Thanks,
Niall
Just went through the .android_secure deleting one of the multiples then checking if it still ran, it did, so I decided to delete one of all of them, and bam, all apps still run, and I'm up to 1GB of free space. The .asec files are what the phone moves to the memory card when you select move to SD in the settings. Obviously, if you are flashing a new rom it doesn't delete them, and then just creates a duplicate. Some old games that I don't play (have completed them) were still in there, some of them ridiculous sizes (Battle Bears - 47MB). Removed about 20 or so off the .asec files, most of them duplicates, some of them were unused apps, and am back up to 1Gig free.
Chuffed
Anyways, anyone know a way to avoid this happening, and also, as a word of warning to everyone...keep an eye out for things like this
Niall
Nhialor said:
Just went through the .android_secure deleting one of the multiples then checking if it still ran, it did, so I decided to delete one of all of them, and bam, all apps still run, and I'm up to 1GB of free space. The .asec files are what the phone moves to the memory card when you select move to SD in the settings. Obviously, if you are flashing a new rom it doesn't delete them, and then just creates a duplicate. Some old games that I don't play (have completed them) were still in there, some of them ridiculous sizes (Battle Bears - 47MB). Removed about 20 or so off the .asec files, most of them duplicates, some of them were unused apps, and am back up to 1Gig free.
Chuffed
Anyways, anyone know a way to avoid this happening, and also, as a word of warning to everyone...keep an eye out for things like this
Niall
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you been flashing roms and not deleting your old .android.secure folder? That will happen, you should delete it before you reflash
AndroHero said:
Have you been flashing roms and not deleting your old .android.secure folder? That will happen, you should delete it before you reflash
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol, yeah, i'm new enough to Android, but learning as I go along
So, when using dolphin hd for the first time, the downloads folder was set such that it created a folder on the sd partition, at /sdcard/sdcard/Downloads, and put some downloads there; (i'd since had fixed dolphin to store in /sdcard/Downloads)
So, we have /sdcard/sdcard/Downloads
In MTP via windows 7, it shows the folder sdcard/downloads, you can explore it, etc.
BUT, when i went to delete this redundant folder via mtp, specifically, deleted /sdcard/sdcard....mtp deleted /sdcard entirely instead.
I had a feeling this is what happened last time i lost my whole sd partition, but wasn't sure what caused it until now. But, rather than waiting and just deleting the file safely from the term on my phone, instead i rushed, deleted, and oh well, my fault. Funny cause i was backing up files at the time while cleaning up. lol. Passing on my pain
Maybe someone can pass this onto someone involved in development (no way im posting in there lol)
I have been having a bit of a problem with my Galaxy Nexus and its driving me nuts because of the storage situation..
Up until a couple weeks ago, I had the latest (at that time) version of AOKP on the phone (4.1.?, JB build 2 possibly). Then, around the first of the year, they updated to their 4.2 version JB-MR1 Build 1. The first time I installed the ROM, I installed it with the wrong GAPPS, ICS vs JB, and the phone went all haywire. I tried to get into the SD card to check which GAPPS was installed, but there were SO many force closes, I couldn't do anything. I rebooted into recovery, tried to go to my SD card, but ALL my info was gone. Basically a clean SD card.
So, I within minutes, I restored back to what I was on and everything was happy. No problems. I then downloaded the right GAPPS, installed the new ROM and GAPPS and everything worked great. Happy happy joy joy..
Today, I went to do a restore and remove some old backups and again, there is a second SD card. There is the normal one, and one labeled under /0/ in the directory.
I can access that directory while in recovery, but cannot with root explorer (or via my computers explorer) to erase it. The problem is, I think it is doubled up my photos and media, and now the card is full..
So, long story just to ask, how can I get rid of this other SD card directory? When talking with a co-worker, he mentioned it creates another directory when a second profile gets created..something I never did.
Any thoughts on how to get this removed so I can have my space back?
MikeDaub said:
I have been having a bit of a problem with my Galaxy Nexus and its driving me nuts because of the storage situation..
Up until a couple weeks ago, I had the latest (at that time) version of AOKP on the phone (4.1.?, JB build 2 possibly). Then, around the first of the year, they updated to their 4.2 version JB-MR1 Build 1. The first time I installed the ROM, I installed it with the wrong GAPPS, ICS vs JB, and the phone went all haywire. I tried to get into the SD card to check which GAPPS was installed, but there were SO many force closes, I couldn't do anything. I rebooted into recovery, tried to go to my SD card, but ALL my info was gone. Basically a clean SD card.
So, I within minutes, I restored back to what I was on and everything was happy. No problems. I then downloaded the right GAPPS, installed the new ROM and GAPPS and everything worked great. Happy happy joy joy..
Today, I went to do a restore and remove some old backups and again, there is a second SD card. There is the normal one, and one labeled under /0/ in the directory.
I can access that directory while in recovery, but cannot with root explorer (or via my computers explorer) to erase it. The problem is, I think it is doubled up my photos and media, and now the card is full..
So, long story just to ask, how can I get rid of this other SD card directory? When talking with a co-worker, he mentioned it creates another directory when a second profile gets created..something I never did.
Any thoughts on how to get this removed so I can have my space back?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android 4.2 has a multiuser framework.
The "0" folder you are seeing is the first user.
Although it's only possible to create more users on tablets without tweaks
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF300T using Tapatalk HD
Lord Yurij said:
Android 4.2 has a multiuser framework.
The "0" folder you are seeing is the first user.
Although it's only possible to create more users on tablets without tweaks
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF300T using Tapatalk HD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Am I crazy saying that it could be taking up a couple gbs of space on my card? It seems that since this started up, my SD is almost full.
Any idea how to merge, or remove that? I can only access the 0 folder while in recovery, and no other time.
They put in symlinks to the folder so you can access it from different directories. The information shouldn't be doubled unless you personally did it.
Reading this might help you understand:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2107194
Lord Yurij said:
Android 4.2 has a multiuser framework.
The "0" folder you are seeing is the first user.
Although it's only possible to create more users on tablets without tweaks
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF300T using Tapatalk HD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
eqjunkie829 said:
They put in symlinks to the folder so you can access it from different directories. The information shouldn't be doubled unless you personally did it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the everything and helping me understand...
I did not copy over anything to that directory, and in fact cannot even access it outside of Recovery. It just looked to me that things were copied over by the file structure, which is why I thought it duplicated things. It just seemed odd to me that when all this happened, my SD card seemed to get much fuller..
Thanks again..
MikeDaub said:
Thanks for the everything and helping me understand...
I did not copy over anything to that directory, and in fact cannot even access it outside of Recovery. It just looked to me that things were copied over by the file structure, which is why I thought it duplicated things. It just seemed odd to me that when all this happened, my SD card seemed to get much fuller..
Thanks again..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Late but useful info for "the next guy". When you install 4.2 its creates a multi-user environment, correct. And you do loose half your space (assuming it was full when you upgraded). Here's why. In 4.2 there is only /data/media which is where your internal SD card (sdcard) is symlinked to (ie: the actual location of your files). When you install 4.2, all of /data/media is copied to /data/media/0 for the first user, then /data/media/11 for the second user, then /data/media/12 for the third user and so forth. Each user gets their own /data/media directory which has all the files that the single user had in 4.1 For each user you add, say its only yourself, you just lost half your space because /data/media still exists but now so does /data/media/0 (a duplicate copy). So you sdcard's space is divided by the number of user accounts your system has installed in 4.2. Hope this clarifies things.
elfaure said:
Late but useful info for "the next guy". When you install 4.2 its creates a multi-user environment, correct. And you do loose half your space (assuming it was full when you upgraded). Here's why. In 4.2 there is only /data/media which is where your internal SD card (sdcard) is symlinked to (ie: the actual location of your files). When you install 4.2, all of /data/media is copied to /data/media/0 for the first user, then /data/media/11 for the second user, then /data/media/12 for the third user and so forth. Each user gets their own /data/media directory which has all the files that the single user had in 4.1 For each user you add, say its only yourself, you just lost half your space because /data/media still exists but now so does /data/media/0 (a duplicate copy). So you sdcard's space is divided by the number of user accounts your system has installed in 4.2. Hope this clarifies things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. After a bunch of research, that is what is happening, and why my phone is always full of "stuff" now.
Now, if I could only access the /0 folders from my desktop...then I would be set..
MikeDaub said:
Thanks. After a bunch of research, that is what is happening, and why my phone is always full of "stuff" now.
Now, if I could only access the /0 folders from my desktop...then I would be set..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you do. its what you see when you plug your phone in.
if you have a old recovery and are flashing roms, it will create multiple /0 folders.
Zepius said:
you do. its what you see when you plug your phone in.
if you have a old recovery and are flashing roms, it will create multiple /0 folders.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If that is the case, I would like to access the standard folder, the copy, or original, or whatever the none /0 folder is..
MikeDaub said:
If that is the case, I would like to access the standard folder, the copy, or original, or whatever the none /0 folder is..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
then you need root to explore /data/media/
Zepius said:
then you need root to explore /data/media/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right. I would just find it handy to do via my desktop...
MikeDaub said:
If that is the case, I would like to access the standard folder, the copy, or original, or whatever the none /0 folder is..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"/data/media/" and "/storage/sdcard0/" or even just "/sdcard/" are the same thing. You dont have copies of files on your phone. If you delete it in one location, it deletes in the other because they are the same. You have the "0" folders on "storage/sdcard0" as well. If you do happen to have copies of files, you can organize it all on your computer if you plug in your phone.
MikeDaub said:
Thanks. After a bunch of research, that is what is happening, and why my phone is always full of "stuff" now.
Now, if I could only access the /0 folders from my desktop...then I would be set..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please thank me by hitting the "thanks" button
We were on our first vacation with our 2 year old and I took a day's worth of photos and at least an hour or two or video. I didn't realize the HTC camera app was saving to the internal SD and I hit my limit. I thought it was as clear as using Root Explorer to move the entire DCIM folder from the "storage" folder to the "sdcard" folder under the funny looking numbered folder that eventually points to the SD. In the process, it asked if I wanted to replace the target DCIM folder, and I thought sure, why not?
Now, my internal storage is barren and my SD card does not show the images I attempted to move... I'm in shock and sadness and currently trying to run FonePaw on the internal storage to see if It can recover anything. So far, it's found only the stuff I deleted months ago. There is the possibility while manipulating folders that I overwrote SD to internal somehow but I'm not sure how that might have happened.
I'm reluctant to install anything such as DiskDigger or Undelete Recover to the phone as that might overwrite more of what I'm trying to recover. Does anyone have any idea what I could have done and how I might get out of this mess? *sigh* MANY many thanks in advance to anyone that might be able to help out. I'm in such a state of sadness at the moment *double sigh*