Now that my HTC Droid Incredible (Gingerbread 2.3.4 rooted stock VZW) is at least working again (all installed apps accessible, gmail + contacts sync-ing, no LDS warnings after uninstalling a few apps), it's time to REALLY figure out what is going on with the internal memory.
I've always wondered about the "dalvik cache", and a quick web search revealed lots of action around this and various strange phone behaviours. But what to do?
Well, I did a full "nandroid" backup using ClockworkMod Recovery just to be safe (there goes another GB on the old sdcard...), and dove in.
It turns out it is quite simple AND quite safe (at least no troubles after a couple of hours...)
The secret is to head over to DINC.DOES-IT.net (
DINC.DOES-IT.NET - HTC Incredible Files) and pick up the following three relatively small files. In fact, they are so small that I just went into my phone webbrowser and brought them directly into the downloads folder of the sdcard (/sdcard/download/).
The files are in the "ext4 files" folder. Specifically:
Convert2Ext4_no_data_limit_normal_dalvik.v2.0.zip
Convert2Ext4_no_data_limit_dalvik_moved.v2.0.zip
Convert2Ext4_no_data_limit_dalvik_moved_Revert.v2.0.zip
These can actually be found elsewhere on the Internet, and they are NOT customised for HTC DINC phones. In fact, they work for just about any hardware or Android OS flavour that uses the dalvik cache.
These are the sort of zip files that are not accessible archives; they are system installer files.
The one to try first is the one at the top, the "normal dalvik" model that leaves the dalvik cache in the internal memory while restructuring the /datadata folder. If you have formatted an Ext4 partition on your sdcard using ROM Manger for instance, you will likely be comfortable with Convert2Ext4, which appears to do similar work with the internal memory partition.
If you start getting LDS warnings or other odd behaviours arise, the next one to try is the "move dalvik cache". This puts it in the (nearly empty) /datadata folder, but this is likely a risky move because there is only 128MB to play with here, so you are likely to have to uninstall plenty of apps to get things working again. Still, given the alternative, it is likely worth a go. If you want to back out of this decision, run the third "move dalvik cache restore" file to do just what it says: restore your phone back to the "normal dalvik cache" location.
So, that is the overall strategy. How to get it done tactically, so to speak?
If you have any experience rooting your phone and using an unlocked (S-OFF) smartphone, then it could hardly be easier.
1. Launch Recovery through ROM Manager, or manually. (If you do not know how to do it, check out what the specific buttons on your model do while entering and operating in Recovery by searching this or other Android smartphone support sites.)
2. Choose "install zip from sdcard" and maneuver to the folder containing the zip files you took off the web. Be careful to choose the right file to achieve what you want to do.
3. After clicking on the proper zip file, Recovery should run through the process completely by itself without need of user intervention. In about 5 minutes, it should all be done. When the screen shows this is the case, back out to the root of Recovery and select "reboot phone".
4. I found things were pretty slow and sticky on the first reboot, so I cold rebooted it one more time. It seemed much more responsive after the second reboot. Don't bother waiting for something to go wonky -- just do the 2nd reboot right away.
After the change, I noticed my internal storage was now reporting 771MB (up from 748MB). At the same time internal memory reported only 307MB free (down from nearly 350MB) and the ROM now reported 20MB free, whereas before it was at most 1MB free (total size remained 270MB).
Now that I see these new numbers, it seems that my worst troubles with limited space (e.g. needing 512kb freed to download email) might have somehow been linked to the ROM -- but I NEVER moved apps into the ROM, and always did everything I could to move them OUT onto sdcard. Anyway, the space pressure definitely seems lifted, with multi-megabytes in all three main storage and/or processing components.
I immediately reinstalled the apps I took off to get rid of the LDS warnings -- this is the acid test, of sorts. No warnings, slowdowns, disappearing apps, or any other odd behaviours -- at least for the first couple of hours!
If anything further happens that is worth reporting, I will do it here on this thread.