prepbgg

I have recently noticed a huge (>3.5GB) file in the DCIM/.thumbnails folder. I have tried deleting it, but the next time I open the Camera app it rebuilds the file (and locks up the phone, sometimes displaying a "media scanning in progress" message, in the process.)

The total file size of all the photos displayed in the Gallery is around 500MB. There are in addition around 35,000 images in folders containing .nomedia files to instruct Android to ignore the media therein. The total file size of these is around 1.5GB. The Gallery app is correctly ignoring these images, but I wonder whether the Camera app is misbehaving and actually processing them.

I think this problem has emerged since the ICS upgrade ... either when the phone was first updated from Gingerbread or at some later date. I am currently on 4.0.4.

Any ideas, please?

GiggityGiggity

I've got 3800 images on my phone and I thought that was excessive! I've just checked and I have 2 files in that folder that are approximately 390mb each. I don't even use the standard gallery app and half of my files are set with the .nomedia files. If you have 35,000 images then it appears that the gallery app is setting a thumbnail for every single one regardless of the .nomedia settings but just doesn't show the ones it shouldn't. That's just stupid.

I use QuickPic instead of gallery as I find the gallery app bloody awful to use. You could try using that and then disabling the gallery app. My guess is you could then delete the huge file and as the app is disabled it won't reappear unless you re-enable it.

Lastly can I just ask.... why do you have 35,000 images on your phone?

prepbgg

Most of them are used an app that I have written. Also there are quite a few that belong to web pages that I have saved for offline viewing.

I like QuickPic too, especially for its greater degree of control over sort order. (Why does the stock gallery only have "newest first"!?) At first I found it took too long to open up ... I think it was correctly paying attention to my .nomedia files but it was taking a minute or so to trawl through the whole folder structure and picking up all the photos that Gallery finds ... However, I have now found the menu option to restrict it just to the few photo folders that I'm interested in. It now opens in a flash.

Last edited by prepbgg; September 13th, 2012 at 08:17 AM.

prepbgg

By googling I have found references to a bug in ICS that may be causing this problem.

Following advice here I have:

1. Deleted the thumbdata file (in DCIM/.thumbnails)

2. In Settings->Applications->All->Gallery: cleared data (only a few MB), (I would also have cleared the cache if there was anything there), then "Force stop"

3. In Settings->Applications->All->Media Storage: cleared data (only about 30MB), (I would also have cleared the cache if there was anything there), then "Force stop"

4. Restarted the phone

When I next ran the Camera app it was unresponsive for a long time, perhaps 20 to 30 minutes, presumably while it was re-scanning media files. After waiting for this to complete things now seem to be OK:
- Camera, Gallery and QuickPic all seem to work
- thumbdata4 seems to have settled at about 500MB

salla43

create a txt file, rename it to the thumbdata file name, delete the big thumbdata file, copy over the small txt file in its place. seems to work ok for me. i had around 5gb of thumb file, terribly wasteful.

use quickpic its much better anyway. And you can easily specify which folder you want it to access rather than all the other crap.

prepbgg

Thanks for the suggestion.

I agree that QuickPic is better than Gallery, but I'm not sure that gallery is the thumbdata culprit. I think it's probably the Media Storage process in Android.

ppero196

I created a simple app that will do the job!
With a press of the button!

Attached Files

Thumbnail file deleter.apk (152.1 KB, 117 views)

prepbgg

Thanks ppero196. I'll use that.

As a matter of interest, do you think it is a bug that has turned up in ICS, or did you have the problem before?

wadster21

This is to introduce myself so I can post a link.

wadster21

If you're still looking for a solution, the new folder method described here worked for me.