Internal Memory

[fagin84]

Hi,

My internal memory is almost full and making my phone slow and also apps are sometimes unable to to update. I have a SD card in the phone too with over 30gb free and I'm trying to transfer files from the internal storage to the removal SD. However, when I connect the phone to the laptop and try to drag stuff across to the SD there only appears to be just over 1gb of data accessible in the internal storage, where is the other 14gb taking up space and how can I access it? I don't want to delete stuff from my internal storage as it seems pointless given the amount of room I have left on the SD card.

Thanks
Fagin84

 

[N4Newbie]

What are you hoping to move? You can't just move anything at all; apps either cannot reside on an SD card or you need to use the app itself or an OS function to move them. Also, of course, a significant chunk of that missing 14GB is your operating system itself and that definitely cannot be moved.

Music and photos/videos are the best choices for the SD card for most users.

 

[Rukbat]

The 14GB is a combination of the operating system (kernel and Android), the installed apps, the downloaded apps and the data the apps keep stored. You can't access any of that to move it to the PC unless the phone is rooted (and you don't want to - if you move Android to the PC, the phone is dead. If you move an app to the PC, the app is no longer on the phone. The only thing you can safely move off the phone is media - music, videos, pictures, books, etc. Some apps can be set to save their data to the SD card (it would be in the individual app's Settings). A very few apps can be moved to the SD card and run from there, and will actually function properly. (Most can't function properly from the SD card - a good developer will know his app can't, and prevent you from being able to move it.)

Back up all the apps you almost never use (use App Backup & Restore) and copy the backup folder to the PC (and to a cloud account, to be safe). Then delete the backup folder and uninstall those apps. (I keep all apps backed up - other than the ones that come installed on the phone - because you never know when an update ruins a good app. You can then uninstall it and reinstall the older version.) You can back up app data with Helium (if the phone isn't rooted, it'll tell you to download a program to your PC, run it and connect the phone to the PC - that's legitimate) and, again, copy the backup folder (it's named carbon) to the PC and the cloud account, then delete it from the PC (BEFORE you uninstall the app).

That should free up some storage. (BTW, internal memory is RAM. What you're running out of is internal storage, the phone's equivalent of a hard drive.)

See Backing up an Android Device for backing everything up.

Oh, and please don't duplicate posts - once is enough.

 

[B. Diddy]

Is your phone updated to Marshmallow yet? If it is, you could consider using the microSD card as adoptable storage, which essentially incorporates the card's storage into the phone's Internal Storage. This allows you to increase the available space for app installation, but will probably also impact the performance of the apps, since microSD cards are always slower than onboard eMMC memory. Read more here:

Inside Marshmallow: Adoptable storage | Android Central
Setting up adoptable storage on the HTC One A9 | Android Central

I realize the latter article is about the A9, but I suspect the steps will be the same for the M8.