Need to DEFRAG internal storage ?

[ptlkmxyz]

GT-S5360 Gingerbread.DXLE1
When I try to install an app I get an error message to the effect that there's no more space I revert to factory settings and all is OK for the first few apps but then the same problem.
When I select Settings>SD card and phone storage> ..... under "Internal phone storage" it says Available space = 26.44MB which is more than enough to accomodate another app
I need to DEFRAG but according to the experts, there's never a need to do so with Android

I managed to download Android SDK onto my PC and run adb utility, so new apps are installed on the SD card ..... so problem kinda solved, but how come I have 26.44MB available but can't install any more apps directly to phone ?

 

[mavrrick]

GT-S5360 Gingerbread.DXLE1
When I try to install an app I get an error message to the effect that there's no more space I revert to factory settings and all is OK for the first few apps but then the same problem.
When I select Settings>SD card and phone storage> ..... under "Internal phone storage" it says Available space = 26.44MB which is more than enough to accomodate another app
I need to DEFRAG but according to the experts, there's never a need to do so with Android

I managed to download Android SDK onto my PC and run adb utility, so new apps are installed on the SD card ..... so problem kinda solved, but how come I have 26.44MB available but can't install any more apps directly to phone ?

First off the reason you don't want to defrag is because of the storage tech, not android. It isn't a good idea with flash storage of any kind to defrag it. The reason to defrag would be to get the data as sequential as possible for traditional disk. Sequential reads are much faster on traditional disk then random IO. On Flash it generally will just reduce the life of the storage considerably.

Usable space though up to 26.4MB could be impacted by how the data is spread through the flash. Since flash is generally written in 4k Chunks it wouldn't be to outrageous to suspect that files in that space have made that much unusable. I would suggest moving as many apps as possible to the SD Card though as having more device storage may improve performance in general.

 

[ptlkmxyz]

Thanks for the reply mavrrick. You say "it wouldn't be to outrageous to suspect that files in that space have made that much unusable". Is there no way to make the space usable - like filling it with binary zeros, or repairing the app-index (that's my made-up term !) ? In the past there were lots more apps on the phone, a lot of which I deleted - but does uninstalling an app properly sort out the indexing ?

 

[Craig King]

I guess technically a defrag of sort is the way to do it.

Basically the problem is no matter what the size of a file it will take up the minimum block size. So what you want is for it to take a bunch of small files and consolidate them into a single/ as few blocks as possible.

I don't know how that would be done, basically something has to trigger a update to those blocks.

What I would be concerned about more is overall performance. As few blocks are avaliable it becomes extremely difficult to write to that storage place. And you end up potentially using the same blocks over and over and causing excessive wear on them. That can lead to failure on flash memory.

I actually ran into this recently on my note 1 as it got down in the 20mb as well. It was acting like a dog. For a few weeks before this happened. I move a bunch of apps to the SD so I have about 600mb and it is running like a new phone.

Just remember anything that runs almost as a system service like keyboards and widgets will run poorly from the external SD card.

If you can I would say upgrade to a ICS device that uses the newer storage layout. Then all of the internal storage is avaliable for apps not a small portion.

Posted via Android Central App