SD Cache building up in my SD card - Any ideas on why?

[Guest kyan31]

Well, I have a really weird issue with my SD card and Internal SD card. It seems that some sort of file is slowly building up on my SD card, causing it to take up all the space. I have done an SD card scan with ES File Explorer and it seems to either be in the LOST directory, or my DCIM folder. To try and solve this, I deleted the LOST directory, and I transfered my photos to a new directory and deleted the DCIM folder, which helps at first, but then it seems to build back up again. I have no idea why this is happening but I would really appreciate some suggestions as its taking up gigabytes of free space. Thanks!

P.s As my laptop is gone, I won't be able to back up my files and format, so suggesting formatting etc. wont really be of any help to me at the moment. If you guys have any methods which can all be done on the phone itself, fire away :)

Edited June 20, 2013 by kyan31

[Guest george109]

Well, I have a really weird issue with my SD card and Internal SD card. It seems that some sort of file is slowly building up on my SD card, causing it to take up all the space. I have done an SD card scan with ES File Explorer and it seems to either be in the LOST directory, or my DCIM folder. To try and solve this, I deleted the LOST directory, and I transfered my photos to a new directory and deleted the DCIM folder, which helps at first, but then it seems to build back up again. I have no idea why this is happening but I would really appreciate some suggestions as its taking up gigabytes of free space. Thanks!

P.s As my laptop is gone, I won't be able to back up my files and format, so suggesting formatting etc. wont really be of any help to me at the moment. If you guys have any methods which can all be done on the phone itself, fire away :)

Which ROM are you on?

[Guest kyan31]

Tesla, which is B960 based. Apparently the LOST.DIR is a storage space for recoverable files you may of deleted previously. However, I don't need to recover anything so I have no idea why its building up on my SD.

[Guest george109]

This might be quite useful for you: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=13726990

[Guest plewis1981]

I no you are far from a noob so I am sorry for asking but have you tried scanning for viruses, as this sounds a lot like a Vitus I had on my laptop, which filled up the temp folder.

Edited June 20, 2013 by plewis1981

[Guest george109]

I no you are far from a noob so I am sorry for asking but have you tried scanning for viruses, as this sounds a lot like a Vitus I had on my laptop, which filled up the temp folder.

It is quite unlikely, as from what I have read, its lost files from a disk check. You could try typing

 su fdisk 

in to the terminal (Download Terminal Emulator from the play store)

Edited June 20, 2013 by george109

[Guest penthaler]

kyan31 - DCIM - THUMBNAILS... dont know why but on stock or stock based ROMs any app creates hiden file thumbxxxxxx with enormous size -> my build up to 2GB.

Will be glad to stop it too, but now only hope is to delete it and again and again, when it appears.

not sure, but when used CM9 there wasnt this problem.

[Guest kyan31]

kyan31 - DCIM - THUMBNAILS... dont know why but on stock or stock based ROMs any app creates hiden file thumbxxxxxx with enormous size -> my build up to 2GB.

Will be glad to stop it too, but now only hope is to delete it and again and again, when it appears.

not sure, but when used CM9 there wasnt this problem.

So it only persists on stock based ROMs? Hmm, maybe there is a way of stopping it then.

[Guest kyan31]

I just want to say thanks for all the suggestions guys, I appreciate it. I tried all the methods posted here, I don't have any virus' etc. so that's not the problem. I am now aware of the .thumbnail folder, so deleting that helped. Now I'll just have to see if the problem still persists after taking some photos.

[Guest CoSmEeN]

I also know about that file/folder or w/e that .thumbnail thing is. Clean Master app always asks me to delete that. You can try that app or take a look at this guide http://androidforums...rd-gallery.html

Edited June 21, 2013 by CoSmEeN

[Guest akarana]

Take a look at Settings -> Apps -> Running -> Cached Processes

next time before deleting thumbnails to see what's making them,

then there might be a chance of a Setting in that App to stop it.

It could be your Camera App, or Picture Viewer.

Baidu and SinaXinWen keep heaps of thumbnails for fast page loading

but not in DCIM, and I s'pose you've chucked them anyway.

[Guest kyan31]

Take a look at Settings -> Apps -> Running -> Cached Processes

next time before deleting thumbnails to see what's making them,

then there might be a chance of a Setting in that App to stop it.

It could be your Camera App, or Picture Viewer.

Baidu and SinaXinWen keep heaps of thumbnails for fast page loading

but not in DCIM, and I s'pose you've chucked them anyway.

I suspected it was the camera/gallery as I would get an I/O error as soon as I opened any of them, and the cache would also fill back up again at the same time. I understand its generating thumbnails for quicker loading times etc., but 2.0GB+ is way too much :P

[Guest akarana]

2GB of thumbnails implies maybe 20G of photos. You really got all that???

Or more likely you've got a rogue Gallery.app

FWIW I'm running the Huawei factory B926 rom and it seems that Gallery does not

recreate thumbnails if I delete them, they only get stored when the photo is taken.

I do have the .nomedia file in several folders, and I didn't put it there, nor

did I install anything I know of that does that. Maybe just the difference

between our rom+Gallery versions...

[Guest penthaler]

I got around hundreds of small pictures and gallery/camera or something else after some time creates thumbnails around 2GB, btw. photos have "only" around 150MBs together. And looks like, that it creates for more apps using thumbs...

.nomedia file is cool, but if I make it in DCIM folder, wont be able to see them in galery and any program, only in file browsers xD

btw. using Stock B952 with some tweaks, but it happend in clear ROM and old GB ROM too... but not in CM9 which I tested xD

Thats weird

[Guest kyan31]

2GB of thumbnails implies maybe 20G of photos. You really got all that???

Or more likely you've got a rogue Gallery.app

FWIW I'm running the Huawei factory B926 rom and it seems that Gallery does not

recreate thumbnails if I delete them, they only get stored when the photo is taken.

I do have the .nomedia file in several folders, and I didn't put it there, nor

did I install anything I know of that does that. Maybe just the difference

between our rom+Gallery versions...

Well I'm actually using a customised version of QuickPic, and I only have 2GB worth of photos. This implies that it is actually duplicating all my photos rather than creating thumbnail versions of them. I have been using QuickPic for over a year, an its never given me problems before, so I'm sure its the ROM itself (B960).

[Guest Nickxdd]

You should use clean master from play store, and delete the thumbnails through that app.

[Guest kyan31]

After more use, it seems that the cache only builds up after I've used the camera. JB Camera+ or ICS Camera to be exact.

[Guest akarana]

Is that the JB and ICS Camera by Moblynx?

I just had a quick glance at their low star ratings on play.google.com, didn't see any with your problem but there were complaints of it not working on 64G cards. I'm installing it now, I'll have a play and see what happens ...

[Guest akarana]

Hmmmm ... I've just installed Camera ICS on B926 and took a few snaps.

/sdcard/DCIM/camera had 17 photos, ~17MB, now has 23 photos and 1 video, total 28MB

/sdcard/DCIM/.thumbnails contains a file thumbnails3data-<numbers> 439MB, BUT it is dated from last week when I installed to play with Camera FV-5. Some deeper diggin' needed here ...

Edit: I've deleted the Big thumbnails-data file, faffed about with all three cameras, looked at the photos with Gallery, ES Image viewer and Boat browser, and that big data file has not re-appeared, yet, ... Maybe it's triggered by something else, maybe needs idle time, a cron job does it, ??

Edited June 24, 2013 by akarana

[Guest akarana]

OK, a bit further down the road, but still not clear.

Camera ICS creates a folder at /mnt/sdcard/DCIM/.thumbnails

Something else must create that folder too, because I had one before installing Camera ICS.

Doing several tests involved clearing appdata and cache, stopping, uninstalling, reboot, install other app, reboot.

If the .thumbnails folder is deleted Camera ICS will re-create it, and the cache file.

Huawei factory camera will not. Camera FV-5 will not.

If the folder exists and is empty, both Huawei factory camera and Camera FV-5 will create inside it the cache file thumbsdata3-nnnnn

in my case this seems to be around 500MB. I have a 32G sdcard and quite a few movie files and clips, a coupla dozen pdf files in a documents folder, and about 50 jpeg files in a maps folder. I copied the thumbsdata3 file to my PC, and it seems to be mostly empty. Running the strings comand gives:

JFIF

 $.' ",#

(7),01444

'9=82<.342

!22222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222

$3br

%&'()*456789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz

&'()*56789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz

#d`

What now? I've fired off a Bug Report to moblynx, but they may decide it's Huawei's fault.

Workaround, delete the .thumbnails folder and don't use cameras that use it.

And I'm glad I've got a Real Camera to take real pictures :P

[Guest kyan31]

Wow, thanks for all the investigating Akarana, I appreciate it. I'll test out as many camera's possible and see which ones are 'thumbnail friendly'. Thanks again.