Huawei P8 Lite weird internal storage

[ilariamayfly]

Hello everybody, I found several topics on this subject but couldn't find an answer.
I have a Huawei P8 Lite, Emui 5 and Android 7.
I was doing some "cleaning" and, you know, maths is not an opinion.
What is going on with the internal storage? It's like 5GB lost in the middle of nowhere.
I usually use Xplore to keep track of files (especially Whatsapp stuff) but I can't find anything that seems to explain that so I can assume they are hidden files?
Will rooting my phone help with that?

 

[B. Diddy]

If you add up those numbers, it's just a little over 10 GB. So the discrepancy is only about 1.5 GB. There might be some hidden files, but the discrepancy could also be explained by how storage space goes by groups of 1024, not 1000 (like with hard drives on a computer: https://www.howtogeek.com/123268/windows-hard-drive-wrong-capacity/). If we use that formula, we come up with 14.9 GB, not an even 16 GB. This would fit perfectly with what you're seeing in the menu.

 

[ilariamayfly]

Thank you! I factory reset the phone and now the discrepancy is less than 1 GB. I also deleted all the apps that came with the phone that I don't use. What do you think those hidden files are about? System files, backup files? I can't find anything through Xplore and even when I connect the device to the pc I can't see the files (I'm being picky but I find it annoying :-\ )

 

[B. Diddy]

Can you show a screenshot of that same menu again?

 

[Rukbat]

If you want to see where the storage is actually being used, run a terminal app, and enter

df

The only part of storage you can access (unless the phone is rooted) is the userdata partition (which is usually the last one in case Huawei named it something else). So a badly partitioned phone can have 128GB of storage, but only 10GB available to the user.

Then use the

ls -a

command to list all files and folders, including hidden ones, to see how much is hidden from the storage display you posted.