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Help Internal storage issue

thalcyon

Newbie
Aug 28, 2011
11
1
So I've seen all the post about storage issues and solving it by clearing cache, moving apps to the SD card etc and that didn't seem to help me and everyday I'd get the low storage warning after removing more and more apps to get it lowered.

So I decided I would do a little testing myself since I couldn't find an answer to my problem (I'm new to android this is my first phone and I've only had it for a month so if what I did is stupid just help a newb out)

So I did a factory reset on my phone which got me almost a gig of internal storage. I then installed only about 20Mb worth of apps including Disk Storage. I rooted my phone to allow Disk Storage to view the individual internal storage files. I went through every folder in the internal storage and wrote down the file sizes. I turned off my mobile network and wifi so no apps would be able to download anything while I was doing this test. Came back 6 hours later to see I lost 36Mb. I went back into Disk Storage to compare file sizes and the only files that grew were alog_event, alog_radio, alog (alog_radio and alog were very minimal). Oh and I had usb debugging off in case that was causing the extra amounts of logging.

So I think I found my problem I just don't know what to do about this. Does anyone know what could be causing the phone to log so much information that it's growing that fast? And is there not a purge by the OS that clears it when it grows too big or will this alog_event file continue to grow until I'm back to no internal storage again? I barely had any apps on my phone and that explains why after 1 month of using this new phone it ran out of space since i'm pretty sure it was that log file constantly growing for that month. Is there an app or an easy way to manually clean that file? I saw {http} developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/adb {dot} html but I'm not sure if a regular user should have to do all this set up for regular maintenance. *Had to do that url like that since I'm not allowed to post with a url yet.

Oh and downloaded alogcat to view the log and it was just random OS type logging, nothing out of the ordinary...aleast from my point of view it was random logging, basically I didn't see too many repeated spammed events but like I said I'm new to this so I'm not sure if something in my logs is out of the ordinary.

Thanks in advanced. I'm hoping someone helps me solve this because I was really excited to join the android consumer base over the IPhone but this has really been frustrating.
 
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Reactions: nomonkeynodeal
There seems to be very few threads where anyone has any information, let alone a solution to this issue, although several people seem to be suffering from it.

The way I went about troubleshooting this was to use Disk Storage to find an area that was taking up a huge amount of space ("System data" in \data, as reported by DS), then I used Yaffs Explorer (my favorite so far; enable all the root options) to find and view that folder. I found about 20 or so "alog*" files, 15 of which were 8mb each and one "alog_events" that was 724mb. So I just deleted that, rebooted, and I am back in business, at least for now.

This file seemed to be growing at a rate of a few MB every hour. I had USB debugging on though, so that might have had something to do with it. I looked inside the file, but it was repetitive hex/ascii gibberish. I couldn't tell what might be the culprit. I'll have to monitor the situation.
 
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I gave up on this thread thinking no one was having my problems.

Glad I decided to check this thread again!

In a way I'm happy I'm not the only one noticing this...I seriously thought it was just me. I also have a Motorola Truimph, but I thought the same thing as nomonkey, that this seems like more of an OS thing not a specific phone issue but the fact we have the same phone makes me wonder if the Motorola Truimph has issues and something in their hardware causes some software applications to constantly complain to the logs.

Nomonkey, I google looking for answers and I see no one else with this problem. You sound like you found others in the same boat as us, can you let me know where, so I can try to help out? I just find it odd that this has gone unnoticed with all the android power users out there and it hasn't been fixed or noticed.

There's got to be a better way to fix this storage issue other than manually deleting files on a regular basis. I didn't think buying an android phone would be this much work :).
 
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...then I used Yaffs Explorer (my favorite so far; enable all the root options) to find and view that folder. I found about 20 or so "alog*" files, 15 of which were 8mb each and one "alog_events" that was 724mb. So I just deleted that, rebooted, and I am back in business, at least for now....

BTW, Thanks for suggesting the Yaffs Explorer app to delete those files. I tried other so called root access file exploring apps and they wouldn't let me delete those with my rooted phone. Installed Yaffs and it worked like a charm. So now every few days I go in and just delete those alog* files. Still wish we knew why this is happening to a few of us.
 
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I just found this thread. Is this the same problem as "Low on Space?"
I asked it about that yesterday but haven't gotten a reply.


I was reading this:
http://lifehacker.com/5650894/andro...ed-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them

and wondered if the Live Wallpaper was bogging down the CPU. It would be helpful if we knew just exactly "which" space was low; what Low On Space refers to, because I had plenty of storage space.

Here was my original post. Right now the phone's "Low on Space" message is gone, I don't know if it's really fixed, time will tell.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Low On Space alerts when not Low on Space? Does anyone know if there's a particular app or bug or something that causes the phone to constantly alert that it's low on space, when it isn't?

I tried removing some apps but I still have more than 2/3 of my phone's internal storage free, so I can't figure out why I'm suddenly receiving Low Space warnings that won't clear.

Thanks for any ideas.

Alert says:
Low on space
Application data space is low.


Internal Phone Storage:
Total space 6.6GB
Available space 4.83 GB

Phone Memory
Total 748 MB
Available 547 MB

SD card
Total space 14.83 GB
Available 14.33 GB

Phone: HTC Incredible I
Android 2.2
No recent updates


Most recent installed apps:
Air Push
Reinstalled Call Confirm
ConvertPad (unit converter)
Italian Verbs
Italian Free
OnTheFly Backup
SiriusXM update
MyAppSharer
Aquarium Live Wallpaper (just removed this, along with deleting and moving several apps, rebooted phone and message is gone now). Don't know if Aquarium was the problem or not?
 
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You sound like you found others in the same boat as us, can you let me know where, so I can try to help out?

I saw like one or two posts about on other sites. If they're googling hard enough they'll find this thread. I also found another thread (with no answers) on this board and stuck a link to this thread there.

After I deleted the files they did not come back for me. They must have been caused by something I had already deleted. Then I wound up trying CM7 and MIUI anyway.
 
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On my Motorola Triumph, after deleting an alog_events file of ~800 MB with YAFFS File Explorer (rooted), I observed the file to be re-created and start growing again, being logged to and growing a few KB in size every few minutes.

I then used YAFFS File Explorer (rooted) to modify the permissions on this newly re-created and much smaller sized alog_events file (< 1 MB) to change the user:group from system:log to root:root and removed all permissions (no rwx for user, group and others = 000 permissions).

At first I thought this didn't work because the file grew another couple kB shortly after I changed permissions; I tried rebooting and it grew another couple kB. However, after that it stopped and hasn't increased in size for several hours.

Might want to give it a try and see how it works for others having this issue (I'd rather make it so the file can't get big to begin with instead of having to go and delete it every few weeks, and looks like this might do that).

Johnny
 
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I have a problem, my cellphone is an android 2.2
ii said low on space and text message memory full
already clear all already remove all apps already did a reset factory already did a flash erase
still after the reset it appear LOW ON SPACE!!!

someone know a solution? i heard a lot of solution about using the LINK2sd
to move apps, but i cant install nothing!!! because said full!!!! :(

someone plz help me
 
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I also have the space issue. Got "att zte avail" android phone. 512 rom but 162mb is for programs and stuff. Have about 16mb left. And upgraded from 2gb sd card to 16gb card. Was on sale at costco for 20 dollars. The problem is not all programs can be moved to the sd card. And forget rooting. I don't want to break my phone and void my warranty.

Anyhow but the 162mb internal storage is more than plenty if not for the file problem. I installed wise pilot like 15mb or so. And when I uninstalled it only got 2mb back. So something not right. NO apps seem to cleanup the space. Only cache which is not the problem. 13mb can't be cache. There are like 20 apps on the phone (not sd card) according to "Apps 2 SD" and only 2 are around 3 mb. And the rest are all way less then that. Most not even over 1mb. So there is no way I'm using 145mb on my phone.

Something is not adding up.
 
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Hello everyone. I just found this thread after experiencing same problem myself. I also have a Triumph. So is the conclusion that everybody came to that there's no solution unless you root your phone? Is there anything we can do to fix this problem even temporarily besides a factory reset for those of us that don't have their phones rooted?
 
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UPDATE: 6 days later and the alog_events file has not grown at all since my last post. Looks like changing the user:group and permissions of the file as described in the last post does prevent the issue from being ongoing!

Nice! I can't believe I didn't think about setting permissions at root level. I'm glad I came back to read that you did that. I was still manually deleting files every few days which wasn't too painful since I had a script do it for me :).

I set the perms for about 6 files that grew all the time. Right after setting the permissions, I rebooted to make sure nothing had a handle on it still and none of them have grown since! One less thing to worry about with my phone.

Thanks again.
 
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Hello everyone. I just found this thread after experiencing same problem myself. I also have a Triumph. So is the conclusion that everybody came to that there's no solution unless you root your phone? Is there anything we can do to fix this problem even temporarily besides a factory reset for those of us that don't have their phones rooted?

AFAIK with my limited android OS experience, you need to root your phone.
 
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I had written up a thread over in the "Android Lounge" forum section but after discussions in there, we realized this is a Truimph only issue. Can a moderator get the thread moved to the Truimph section? If not, here is the link to jump to, to learn more about the storage issue on the Truimph.

http://androidforums.com/android-lounge/404997-internal-storage-issue.html
 
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