Phones memory not cleared after system restore

[Ez Duzit]

Having some problems here and also a few questions regarding the phones memory. When I got this phone early in December I noticed a few things regarding the memory that bugged me. First thing I noticed it only showed 12 Gb for the phones storage. I assumed the other 4 Gb were taken up by samsung bloatware but now I'm not so sure. Where is the other 4 Gb of storage? Also I noticed my RAM only shows as 1.5 Gb instead of 2 Gb. What's the story with that?

Now here's my immediate problem also dealing with the phones memory.
Rooted my GS3 about 10 days after getting it, but left the stock 4.1.1 JB that came with it. Just wanted to have fun with it and get used to JB before going with a custom rom. I went a little crazy downloading some huge games just to check out the phones graphics. Those games took several GB of space and I didn't want a nandroid backup with all that crap so I figured I would do a system restore first, and after the basic setup I would have a nice fresh install for a nandroid. Problem is the rom didn't clear for some reason. System restore went fine but the phone shows I only have about 7 GB of space left and that's right after a system restore.
I actually did 2 system restores because the first time I left the check marks for google backup and it started downloading and installing all the crap I wanted gone. So I didn't bother waiting for it to finish, I turned off the phone and did another system restore. Made sure the second time to uncheck the google backup option and the restore went fine. Phone is up and running but I noticed the memory wasn't right. Rebooted into TWRP Recovery and wiped cache and dalvik cache but no difference in the available storage showing on the phone.
So what are my options to reclaim my memory?
What happens if I wipe the internal storage using twrp? I'm guessing there's no system restore after that....but I did d/l the stock JB LJ7_update_FULL_Odex.zip (in case I might need it lol).


Screen shot taken shortly after system restore. Help



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[IAmSixNine]

System storage and phone storage are 2 different things. When you wiped your device and did not select wipe phone storage those games you downloaded were removed from system storage but the additional data they store on phone storage is still there. It acts like a SD card, so if you need to wipe system then the phone part is not touched..

 

[Almeuit]

Having some problems here and also a few questions regarding the phones memory. When I got this phone early in December I noticed a few things regarding the memory that bugged me. First thing I noticed it only showed 12 Gb for the phones storage. I assumed the other 4 Gb were taken up by samsung bloatware but now I'm not so sure. Where is the other 4 Gb of storage? Also I noticed my RAM only shows as 1.5 Gb instead of 2 Gb. What's the story with that?

This is normal. It's like a hard drive with a PC.. You buy a 500GB hard drive and get only 465ish. All hard drives act this way.. They lose some space once formatted.

For the RAM shortage on the phone (At least from what I've noticed on android) My guess would be the system is reserving some memory just for itself. You still have 2GB just not the full extent.

Sent from my Sprint S3 using AC forums

 

[Ez Duzit]

System storage and phone storage are 2 different things. When you wiped your device and did not select wipe phone storage those games you downloaded were removed from system storage but the additional data they store on phone storage is still there. It acts like a SD card, so if you need to wipe system then the phone part is not touched..

That makes sense.
But if I wipe both the Internal storage and System storage from recovery, will there even be a factory reset to go back to? Or will I have to use a nandroid?

 

[Ez Duzit]

I tried clearing the system storage and internal storage. Then I restored the nandroid I made right before that and NOW MY PHONE IS STUCK ON THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S3 boot screen. I'm about to lose a goddam days pay since I can't work without a phone. Just wonderful.

 

[Buddlespit]

Can you try another restore and, this time, check the MD5? You might have had a bad nand.

 

[Ez Duzit]

Can you try another restore and, this time, check the MD5? You might have had a bad nand.

Already Thanked you in the other thread and you definitely deserve to be thanked here too. Checking the box for md5 in the system restore did the trick. Now I'm off to work . Thx again Buddlespit, You rock.

 

[Ez Duzit]

System storage and phone storage are 2 different things. When you wiped your device and did not select wipe phone storage those games you downloaded were removed from system storage but the additional data they store on phone storage is still there. It acts like a SD card, so if you need to wipe system then the phone part is not touched..

I tried clearing the system storage and internal storage. Then I restored the nandroid I made right before that and NOW MY PHONE IS STUCK ON THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S3 boot screen. I'm about to lose a goddam days pay since I can't work without a phone. Just wonderful.

Hey SixNine, I owe you an apology. When my phone got stuck on the Samsung boot screen I freaked out like a little girl that had her pigtails pulled. When it didn't boot even after loading a different backup I got a little frantic since I had to get ready for work and I need the phone for my job. But as I'm sure you know, your advice was 100% spot on and it was ME who screwed up Sorry about that. :-[
What happened is I didn't even notice the check box to activate the md5 checksum until buddlespit recommended it. Of course once I did that, it restored the backup and booted fine. I was really rushing for work at that point, so I didn't even check the storage until later. And sure enough the storage was completely cleared and I had almost the full 12gb again to load up with apps. Thank you.

 

[Buddlespit]

Just so you're aware, I asked about the md5 because I thought that maybe your nand was corrupt. Checking md5 doesn't change anything or makes the nand restore differently, but checks the integrity of the nand.

So, to sum it up, something bad happened on your first restore and the bad thing didn't happen the second time.

 

[Ez Duzit]

Just so you're aware, I asked about the md5 because I thought that maybe your nand was corrupt. Checking md5 doesn't change anything or makes the nand restore differently, but checks the integrity of the nand.

So, to sum it up, something bad happened on your first restore and the bad thing didn't happen the second time.

Hey man I believe you. But when I don't put a check in the box to enable MD5 verification (using twrp recovery), it blows thru the restore process in only 10-15 seconds.That's what kept happening and I know a restore takes a few minutes. When I saw your post it was definitely one of those "whack head with palm" moments. I went back into recovery and enabled MD5 verification to check if it was corrupted. It verified the checksum, then did the restore. But when I disable the verify MD5 option, it just speeds thru it again. Maybe twrp does that by design.
Anyway, you pointed me in the right direction.... well the exact direction actually. So don't be so humble, go ahead and take some credit. Here, on me

BTW, I'm pretty sure I remember you from the Optimus S forum here. I had a lot of fun with that phone but I don't miss it not even one tiny bit lol. My biggest problem was always that tiny screen but not a problem with the S3.