Android's confusing filesystem and freeing space up

[Alex Starbuck]

Hi all,

my girlfriend owns a Galaxy S9, which she has been using for about a year. Recently, the phone became more and more sluggish and unresponsive at times. I understand that the probable culprit is the lack of internal memory so I bought her an SD card and instructed her to move the camera roll and all new camera files to that card.

However, upon closer inspection, I saw that some of the folders have not been moved, that the Device care shows "Other" as taking up almost half of the internal storage, etc.

So it got me thinking - is there a simple way for a non power-user to do some spring cleaning on their device? What would the checklist for a proper clean-up look like?

1. New camera files need to be directed onto the .../sd_card;
2. Existing .../DCIM/Camera needs to be transferred onto the card (how to get these images and videos exactly into the newly formed /Camera folder on the SD card from step 1?);
3. What about custom folders created under ...Internal storage/DCIM/customFolder, should I move these one by one to SD card as well?;
4. Uninstall unused apps;
5. Move remaining apps to the SD card;
6. Clear cache for each app, one by one (is there a way to "batch" do this?);
7. Anything else I am forgetting?

Many thanks for all the replies!
Alex

 

[hallux]

Moving apps to SD is unreliable and slow. It also needs to be noted that if an app is moved to the SD card and then gets updated it gets moved back to internal storage. Moving photos and videos to SD is definitely a good idea.

She must have a lot of apps on her phone if she's running out of space.

 

[L0n3N1nja]

5. Move remaining apps to the SD card;

Alex

This will slow the phone down, not speed it up. Internal storage is around 10x faster than an SD card. Any app running off the sd card will be sluggish. Plus in the event of an sd card failure you'll be stuck factory resetting the phone.

 

[Alex Starbuck]

There are about 400 apps on the phone (I simply cannot believe that, when I scroll through them it seems more like a 100 but when I updated her OS, a message appeared notifying me that app xx/400 was being optimized).

Also, this OTHER category is taking up a lot of space:

• Total space: 64 GB;
• System memory: 11.5 GB;
• Photos and videos: 23.9 GB;
• Other apps: 17.9 GB;
• Files: 773 MB;

What should I do? Move all of her custom folders, from the Gallery app to the SD card? Go to device care, one by one clear data from every app?

 

[B. Diddy]

"Other" does not mean other apps -- it's just data that is not categorized under the rest of the labels. It also does not mean that Other data is expendable.

400 apps would not be unusual, especially for a Samsung phone. In addition to all of the system apps, Samsung also preinstalls a lot of apps (i.e., bloatware) that can't be uninstalled. Straight out of the box, I'd guess it already has well over 100, possibly upwards of 200 system and preinstalled apps already present.

Common culprits for storage bloat are messaging apps and social media apps, which can build up gigantic data caches. Check the app info for apps like Telegram, kik, Instagram, etc. and see if clearing their caches can help to recover data.

DiskUsage can give you a better idea of what's taking up storage.

 

[ManiacJoe]

The first thing to do is to transfer all the media files (photos, videos, music, documents) to the SD card.
Using your favorite file browsing app:
- COPY (not move) the /DCIM folder to the SD card.
- COPY the /Music folder to the SD card.
- If your videos are stored elsewhere, COPY their folder to the SD card.
- Restart the phone
- Open the camera app, use its settings to set the SD card as the default storage
- Verify that the /DCIM files on the SD card are correct. If yes, delete the original files from the internal storage.
- Verify that the /Music files on the SD card are correct. If yes, delete the original files from internal storage.
- Restart the phone.

Keep the apps on the internal storage. This is where they belong and run the fastest.

For the apps that use lots of storage space (camera, maps, GPS, games), check the settings in each app to see where ones allow their data to be storage on the SD card.

Check the storage usage of the messaging apps and social media apps. Some of them go crazy badly with their cache files.

 

[dangerousfen]

Load up Ccleaner from the Play Store. I find it excellent for clearing up the cache. I don't have the option in the recovery menu to clear the cache so I have to do with Ccleaner.