Delete LOST.DIR, get memory back

[Kyle Gibb]

I was checking my Inc's internal memory to see why I only had about 3GB of space left, despite having no music or videos on it. I had recently moved all of this to a 16GB microSD card.

Lo and behold, there was a folder named LOST.DIR that was taking up over 2GB of space on my internal memory. After some sluthing online, I figured out LOST.DIR is basically some kind of recycle bin that grows whenever you dont eject your phone when viewing it on your computer properly. So I deleted it and haven't run into any problems with my phone.

I would encourage everyone to check their phone for this folder next time they hook it up to their computer and delete it as all it does is keep files you want deleted and use up your valuable memory!

 

[BadPeekSell]

whenever you dont eject your phone when viewing it on your computer properly.

What do you mean by that?

 

[bark8015]

Assuming you're using a Windows computer, he means you need to eject (unmount) the storage prior to unplugging the cable.

 

[Kyle Gibb]

Assuming you're using a Windows computer, he means you need to eject (unmount) the storage prior to unplugging the cable.

I am actually using a mac, but the principal is the same.

What do you mean by that?

When you hook your phone to your computer (pc or mac) the computer sees both the SD card and the internal memory as separate external drives, like it would see a USB flash drive if you use one. you should "unmount" these drives to prevent issues when you want to disconnect your phone, rather than just pulling the usb cable out.

 

[JF]

I was checking my Inc's internal memory to see why I only had about 3GB of space left, despite having no music or videos on it. I had recently moved all of this to a 16GB microSD card.

Lo and behold, there was a folder named LOST.DIR that was taking up over 2GB of space on my internal memory. After some sluthing online, I figured out LOST.DIR is basically some kind of recycle bin that grows whenever you dont eject your phone when viewing it on your computer properly. So I deleted it and haven't run into any problems with my phone.

I would encourage everyone to check their phone for this folder next time they hook it up to their computer and delete it as all it does is keep files you want deleted and use up your valuable memory!

So you just deleted the folder via ASTRO or something?

Or did you delete the contents of the folder?

 

[Kyle Gibb]

So you just deleted the folder via ASTRO or something?

Or did you delete the contents of the folder?

I plugged it into my computer, opened the folder, and deleted everything inside.

 

[Zooks64]

I'm running Windows 7 and I just unplug the usb all the time without unmounting the drives and my lost.dir folders were empty on both the internal and the sd memory.

 

[cp1024]

file system error

when android says it is preparing sd card it's scanning for possible file system errors and any suspects are truncated to lost.dir, if you delete the contents of lost.dir you will be erasing the remnants of all of the files that you could not find. you can use pc programs lost unchk, or use a file exp like EStrongs file explorer to open the files..

 

[Val Killmore]

I stumbled on this thread and it saved me 11.5 GB of space on my Galaxy Fascinate

THANKS !!!! I was going insane trying to figure out why I was losing disc space, and I noticed the Lost.Dir folder was 95% of the missing space. This thread revealed I could safely remove it.

I actually deleted the entire folder, and it was re-created after a reboot of the phone, but empty.

 

[Mayank Trivedi]

Re: file system error

when android says it is preparing sd card it's scanning for possible file system errors and any suspects are truncated to lost.dir, if you delete the contents of lost.dir you will be erasing the remnants of all of the files that you could not find. you can use pc programs lost unchk, or use a file exp like EStrongs file explorer to open the files..

Hi
I am using LG P970(Optimus Black series phone).
I recently upgraded my OS(Android) from 2.2 to 2.3 and prior to it everything was working fine on SD card.
But after the updation of the OS all the files including .mp3 ,pics were moved into LOST.DIR folder.
Initially I was perplexed and I even asked the LG service centre people.
They had no answer to it.
I tried myself by adding extensions to it randomly and I was able to access files but some of them.
I want to recover all the data from LOST.DIR.

Are there no softwares available to do so ?
Thanks in advance.
I need them..

 

[PvilleComp]

LOST.DIR is akin to the Recycle Bin in Windows, but it is different. Not everything in LOST.DIR is necesarially something you want to recover, but to help you recover what you can, try this:

Download Recuva from here: Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download
Install it on your PC
Attach your phone as a drive to your PC and use Recuva to scan both the SD card and the internal memory as necessary and see what it can pull back.

The sooner you do this the better. The fewer times the data is "written over" by another program the more successful you will be.

Hope this helps.

 

[fyrfytr24]

wonder what all i can recover

 

[TauVhieq]

so, is that safe if i delete LOST.DIR ???

 

[EternaLame]

I was having the same problem. My phone is Samsung Galaxy S2 (GT-i9100). I was on stock Jellybean. But it was starting to feel sluggish and slow. So, having heard about the new Android Kitkat's lower memory requirements and smoother performance, i decided to install Cyanogenmod 11 on it.

Installation was not without problems. At first i flashed Clockworkmod Recovery 6.0.2.9. The phone bricked into a bootloop with a yellow triangle on it. Flashing the Cyanogenmod 11 resulted an error of "Status 7". So i searched for the latest Clockworkmod Recovery, which was at 6.0.4.5. After flashing the 6.0.4.5, Cyanogenmod 11 installed successfully. Performance was really smooth. No lags, no jitter, and everything worked like a charm.

The problem started when i re-installed my applications. Suddenly i got a message of "insufficient storage". This has never happened before. Note, that i previously had large games on my phone like Real Racing 3 and Bard's Tale. This time, i haven't even installed those large games. So i looked at my Storage, and found out that i only had 141mb of free space. But the weird thing is, my reported Apps was only 353mb, from 1.97GB internal storage. So there was over 1GB of storage just vanished.

I browsed for a solution to this problem, and landed on xda-developers forum. Members there suggested it was because of the LOST+FOUND folder in the root folder. After reading reply from fabiosirigu, i decided to brave myself, and deleted the content of the lost+found folder (but not the folder itself). I accessed the folder with the built-in File Manager from Cyanogenmod, and set it to "Root Access Mode", and select all folder in the folder, and deleted it. The deletion took quite a few minutes, which felt like ages. Just sat on my bed, crossed my fingers, hoped that nothing will go wrong.

After the deletion, i rebooted my phone. the cyanogenmod logo appeared, and the system booted as usual. I just exhaled a massive sigh of relieve. I went straight to the internal storage, and now it is showing the correct report, 1.67GB of free space.

 

[Oystein Nilsen]

I tried all of the above without getting much space back from the device memory.
However the thread http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...ot-download-updates-new-apps.html#post3123230 helped me out with following this procedure:
"A simple way to free up storage space is by deleting all the log files in the device memory. Just dial *#9900# on your phone and select option 2 ?Delete dumpstate/logcat? in the prompted menu. It's not necessary to root your phone either. That?s it!"

 

[tahx]

Necro - cos I can't delete the files. Not while in the phone, not while the SD is connected to my PC. (Perhaps because it's not rooted? I haven't decided whether I want to...) It's almost seven gigs of space! It's an LG Leon.

 

[tahx]

Kinda solved - I was able to delete the files by putting the drive on an XP machine, setting share on, 'others change files yes', and then I had to delete the files manually, as it wouldn't delete the whole folder.

I guess pulling out a drive without unmounting - I never unmount flash from a PC and it's FINE - on a phone trips the watchdog. It doesn't just back up, it says 'you can't have no MO!' Unfortunately, electronics don't get better from a hulk-smashing.........