Low on internal storage

[Guest Dan Mullen]

Hi,

For quite a while now I've noticed my internal storage has dramatically decreased. I always used to have around 90MB free, when I went to MCR 3.0 it dropped to around 60MB due to the dalvik-cache, but now I'm on around 25MB. I've had a look and the two largest directories by far in /data are as follows:

/data/dalvik-cache 65MB

/data/data 58MB

I have a few questions...

1. Is it normal for the dalvik-cache to take up so much space? I have around 100 apps installed.

2. If I clear the dalvik-cache, will all of the odex files be recreated when I reboot? Will it have any impact on performance?

3. What sort of stuff is held in /data/data and is 58MB a reasonable amount of space for it to be using up?

I'm not too bothered by the amount of internal storage I have free as long as there's some left, but it's just a bit baffling. I have a mate at work who has more apps installed than I do but he has around 3 times as much internal storage free. Makes me think maybe I have a whole batch of files sitting somewhere from an old installation that could be taking up unnecessary space.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Dan

[Guest Tebo2K]

Hi Dan,

I'm quite new at all of this, so I don't know what constitues a "normal" amount of data in dalvik-cache. I am however running Amon Ra recovery image 1.5.2 and it gives the option to wipe dalvik-cache.

When I did this, it took maybe 5 minutes for the phone to restart and I gained maybe 10MB internal storage (I don't have a lot of apps on there, but I have tried and uninstalled several).

Might be worth a try?

Mr T

[Guest clarkEEE1]

you could just move davlik cache to sd that will save space and modaco does not use odex files no more that is why it uses 30mb more internal memory. If you look at pictures on facebook etch id clear the album cache as this uses a lot of internal memory saving thumbs etc. I use ta utility from market and moved all browser cache etc to sd this saves abit of space. Are you useing apps to sd I have well over 100 apps installed and got 78mb left and got some big apps like co pilot installed.

[Guest Dan Mullen]

Thanks for the responses guys. I'm also using apps2sd and v1.5.2 of the Amon-RA recovery image. I'd read about the dalvik-cache taking up around 30MB extra. I don't really want to move it to the SD card as I've this seems to affect performance a bit. As I said, it's not a problem at the moment but if I can recover any space taken up by old or unnecessary files then that woudl be great ;)

[Guest Dan Mullen]

Thanks for the responses guys. I'm also using apps2sd and v1.5.2 of the Amon-RA recovery image. I'd read about the dalvik-cache taking up around 30MB extra. I don't really want to move it to the SD card as I've this seems to affect performance a bit. As I said, it's not a problem at the moment but if I can recover any space taken up by old or unnecessary files then that woudl be great ;)

Ah well, I just wiped my dalvik-cache and rebooted... recovered about 2MB ;)

[Guest Dan Mullen]

The /data/data directory seems to contain some quite large data directories:

du -h -d 1 data | grep [0-9]M

   1.3M	data/com.newsrob

   2.3M	data/com.android.browser

   3.9M	data/com.android.providers.contacts

   7.0M	data/com.htc.album

   2.1M	data/com.android.htccontacts

   7.2M	data/com.alk.copilot.marketplace.eu.major

   7.3M	data/com.htc.htctwitter

   1.0M	data/com.htc.android.mail

   1.8M	data/com.chickenbrickstudios.cestos_full

   1.1M	data/com.htc.launcher

   4.7M	data/com.htc.socialnetwork.provider

   3.4M	data/com.android.BizCardReader

   1.6M	data/com.android.providers.telephony

   1.3M	data/com.google.tts

   1.7M	data/com.facebook.katana

   57.8M   data

Does anyone know what the upshot is of going into "Manage applications" and hitting "Clear data"? For example, if I did that for Peep (HTC Twitter), would it screw the installed app or would I just lose my login details and cached tweets, etc.?

[Guest kendon]

Does anyone know what the upshot is of going into "Manage applications" and hitting "Clear data"? For example, if I did that for Peep (HTC Twitter), would it screw the installed app or would I just lose my login details and cached tweets, etc.?

the second answer is correct.

[Guest Dan Mullen]

the second answer is correct.

Ah right, thanks. I dunno where 7.3MB of data has come from... I hardly use Twitter!

[Guest clarkEEE1]

Yeah your album cache seems high on 7mb id clear that as well prob free up more room.just cleared all my caches etc got 86mb free well over 100 apps on modaco 3 I think that's good going I always keep my phone as slick as I can, to be honest I have not noticed any performance differance from when apps and davlik were stored on phone my sd is san disk class 4 8gb with ext 4 partition everything is smooth as.

Edited December 18, 2009 by clarkEEE1

[Guest genocida]

I move dalvik-cache to /cache and works fine..

[Guest Dan Mullen]

I move dalvik-cache to /cache and works fine..

Cool :) If you read this Paul, could you please consider this for a future release? That is of course unless there is a particular reason why it's in /data rather than /cache.