Help! Android is wrongly telling me memory almost full

[mistermark2]

I have a Sony Xperia Z3 running Android 5.1.1. I am not a particularly technical user, just a consumer. My phone has a 128GB SD card and I always move apps to the card when the 75% notification comes up, so there is always a good amount of spare memory capacity in the phone. I also store data on the card, notably music.

This morning the phone crashed and when it restarted there were various warnings saying the memory was almost full so it would not work properly. A number of apps crashed or did not load properly. It asked me to uninstall some unused apps, which I did.

When I went to the storage menu it told me only 474MB was available of the phone's storage (normally there's about 3GB free) and that I had 32.17GB of apps in the phone memory, which I believe is impossible as the phone's memory capacity is less than that. It also said I had 73.55GB of available space on the SD card, which is about the normal figure.

I tried to transfer data to the SD card to free up space in the phone memory. It told me the internal storage was 95% full and that transferring data to the SD card is recommended to free internal storage. But in the list of photos, videos, music and apps that could be transferred it said there was nothing there, and therefore nothing could be transferred.

Also, I've tried restarting the phone a few times and removed and reinserted the SD card. The card seems to work fine, as I can play downloaded tracks stored on it.

I urgently need to fix this phone so all the apps work and it doesn't crash. Can anyone recommend a solution?

 

[Aquila]

It sounds like you may have had an app update change which portions of the app are stored on internal and which are stored on external. What is the actual capacity of your device, without the SD card? Also, have you updated any large apps and/or accepted a software update for the phone?

 

[mistermark2]

I believe the capacity of the device is 16GB, of which just under 12GB are shown in the Storage menu as being available for use.

Many weeks have passed since the last software update. Most days a handful of apps need updating. When this happens, often the phone tells me that the phone memory is 75% full and asks me to click yes to move apps to the SD card, and I accept. I haven't changed any settings so apps are saved to the internal memory but I guess it could have happened somehow without my involvement.

Do you know how to fix the problem? I can't just move apps to the SD card, because when I try that, the phone tells me there are no apps to be moved.

 

[Golfdriver97]

You might have to either reset the phone, or reflash the ROM, in order to fix this.

 

[mistermark2]

You might have to either reset the phone, or reflash the ROM, in order to fix this.

How do I do either of these things? And how can I tell which of the two is needed?

 

[Golfdriver97]

A reset can be done in settings>back up and reset. As for flashing the ROM, it depends on if the device has the bootloader accessible to users.

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