Help Free up internal space - what are my options?

[bingobango]

I have 17mb of free space left on my phone - and this was after I cleared the cache out of all the apps I could find. In uninstalled some also which I dont use. What are my options now to free up some space.

Here is what I have installed ordered by size. An asterix means it is on the SD card and not on the internal memory..

CoPilot
Facebook
Maps
Swype
Gmail
Runkeeper
Astro
Cardiotrainer**
Market
Sky+
Angry Birds**
Shopper**
Dolphin Browser HD**
Movies**
Barcode scanner**
BT FON
Google sky map**
Vignette demo**
Swype installer


How are contacts stored - on the phone or memory? There is an option to export to SD card - any explanation of how this works?

I believe one of my options is to root my phone - if I decided to do this:

1. How can this free up some internal memory (use apps2sd to move which apps to sd?)

2. Will I *lose* anything from my phone if I decide to root? Or will the phone be the same except for being rooted..

Thanks for the help folks!

 

[DesireMe]

http://androidforums.com/desire-tip...apps-sd-card-unrooted-device-noobs-guide.html

 

[williamj1]

I have 17mb of free space left on my phone - and this was after I cleared the cache out of all the apps I could find. In uninstalled some also which I dont use. What are my options now to free up some space.

Here is what I have installed ordered by size. An asterix means it is on the SD card and not on the internal memory..

CoPilot
Facebook
Maps
Swype
Gmail
Runkeeper
Astro
Cardiotrainer**
Market
Sky+
Angry Birds**
Shopper**
Dolphin Browser HD**
Movies**
Barcode scanner**
BT FON
Google sky map**
Vignette demo**
Swype installer


How are contacts stored - on the phone or memory? There is an option to export to SD card - any explanation of how this works?

I believe one of my options is to root my phone - if I decided to do this:

1. How can this free up some internal memory (use apps2sd to move which apps to sd?)

2. Will I *lose* anything from my phone if I decide to root? Or will the phone be the same except for being rooted..

Thanks for the help folks!

Rooting will allow you to free up a lot more space, as it allows you to move extra parts of the app like some cache thing (i'm not technical) onto the sd, giving you more space. Rooting itself won't change the phone but remember only roms which support a2sd (ie. not stock) will work. So you will need to root, then flash a stock rom which someone has added a2sd support to in order to achieve this.

The alternative is to not root, but follow a process using the sdk.

Luckily for you, I made detailed and easy guides on how to do it.

- Click the links in my signature for rooting / unrooting options. The poster above already posted a link to the unrooted guide I made above.
Link 1 is the rooted option.
Link 2 is the unrooted option.

 

[flashsam]

Copilot released a new version a few months ago which allows it to be moved to the SD card now. That should free up a sizable chunk of space.

 

[Eris Ed]

Rooting and adding a ROM with A2SD+ was the best thing I ever did with my Desire. No more low memory warnings. It takes some learning and some preparation but well worth it.

 

[bingobango]

Ok I used the
How to move apps to sd card on an unrooted device: A noobs guide.

And it seemed to work, wont let me transfer Facebook though, or Maps or Gmail - but I got enough across!

I now have 40MB free space...

Will read more about rooting first before I go ahead.

"So you will need to root, then flash a stock rom which someone has added a2sd support to in order to achieve this. "

So when you flash with the ROM - does that basically wipe the phone clean?

 

[SUroot]

Ok I used the
How to move apps to sd card on an unrooted device: A noobs guide.

And it seemed to work, wont let me transfer Facebook though, or Maps or Gmail - but I got enough across!

I now have 40MB free space...

Will read more about rooting first before I go ahead.

"So you will need to root, then flash a stock rom which someone has added a2sd support to in order to achieve this. "

So when you flash with the ROM - does that basically wipe the phone clean?

If you flash teppic74's rooted stock rom:

[ROM] [11/01] Pre-rooted Stock Froyo (2.29.405.5) [Optional mods] - xda-developers

You may get away with not having to wipe data.

However, once rooted you can always make a titanium backup (app on market) of your apps and restore later

 

[DesireMe]

Ok I used the
How to move apps to sd card on an unrooted device: A noobs guide.

And it seemed to work, wont let me transfer Facebook though, or Maps or Gmail - but I got enough across!

I now have 40MB free space...

Good stuff. You're welcome.

 

[bingobango]

Been reading the guides about rooting and I'm not sure its seems quite an involved process. All this talk of backing up, gold cards (?), and the uncertainty of excatly what I will lose on my phone if I root with a Rom - even if I use a rooted stock ROM.

Will I lose my GPRS/Data settings for my network? Contacts? Email settings? That sort of thing...

 

[SUroot]

Well like I said, with flashing of a rooted stock rom, if it doesnt need a wipe, youwont lose anything.

If you do a titanium backup and just restore apps and mybackup to restore sms and call logs, you will lose esettings if you wipe and restore.

 

[bingobango]

So do I need to do the following:

1. Copy everything off my SD card to my PC.
2. Wipe the SD card clean.
3. Partition the SD card - ext3 etc
4. Copy everything back to SD.
5. Root the phone using unrevoked.
6. Install a rooted stocked ROM ([ROM] [11/01] Pre-rooted Stock Froyo (2.29.405.5) [Optional mods] - xda-developers)

when to do a titanium backup? Before step 1 above? I take it it puts the backup on the sd card?

Thx!

Edit: My phone is branded O2 - but I bought it off them outright before I cancelled, so I dont think its locked. I have it on Tesco network so I'm not sure how this would affect future updates to the phone.
HBOOT is 0.93 whatever that means.

 

[barefootpilot]

Firstly, run the titanium backup before copying the SD card as you will then have a backup of your backup.

Once you root and install a custom ROM you will want to disable the update option on the phone settings. Trying to install an over the air (ota) update on top of a custom ROM is not generally a good idea.

I rooted recently and having backed up all apps with titanium, plus all data with mybackup decided to try leedroid. It's a sense based ROM so will be familiar, it's also very stable and everything works well. Doesn't take long to reinstall apps. Once you are rooted you can do nandroid backups, which is an exact image of your phone that can be restored at any time. This makes it very easy to try out new ROMs and go back to what you had before if you don't like them.

A word of warning - once you start down this path you will very likely start exploring the whole world of customising the phone. It's addictive.......

 

[SUroot]

Too true

 

[bingobango]

Thanks for the help.

1. I am just worried about gprs settings etc which allow me to access the internet on my phone. Will I have to set these all up again or are they all stored on the sim card?

2. If I install leedroid do I need to wipe everything off the phone? But will my titanium backup restore everything?

3. Do I need to copy stuff back to the phone since using the noobs method to copy to sd for unrooted phones?

4. I downloaded titanium but it wouldn't run as it said my phone wasn't rooted! So do I need to root first?

 

[barefootpilot]

To answer your questions (I hope...)

1. So far I've had leedroid 2.3b, c and d, and GingerVillain 0.6, 0.7 and 0.8 on my phone. I've never been anywhere near the gprs/network/mobile internet settings, and probably couldn't tell you where they are or what they do.

2. If you want to install a custom ROM it's best to wipe the phone. Generally speaking it's often ok not to do this if you are putting an updated version of the same ROM onto an older one, but even then in the event of any issues, the best plan would be to wipe and try again. Titanium will restore all the apps and associated data you had, so stuff like angry birds will return with your all important level progress intact. i use 'mybackup' to make a backup of call logs, sms, mms, dictionary etc as I find it easy and quick.

3. Not sure what this means, really. Copying the sd card to the computer is a good idea, and do it often. My original sd card died during a mapDroyd update - completely and utterly dead to all devices. Fortunately nothing much on it that I couldn't replace, but lesson learned.

4. Probably. I never used titanium until after my first custom ROM install (it comes with most ROM's which is why it's best to get to grips with it). Rooting does nothing really on its own, by that I mean it doesn't change anything about how you phone will look or what is installed on it. Root, download titanium, backup all apps. Boot into recovery (turn phone off and then switch on while holding down 'down volume' key) and backup the phone with the backup & restore option in the recovery menu (nandroid). After that you're pretty much covered.

Hope this helps. It's all pretty complicated and slightly scary at first but you soon get used to the idea of factory resetting and wiping your phone just to try a new ROM for a few hours/days. I'm still pretty un-adventurous when it comes to ROM's, I like to be able to use all the features of the phone without having to tweak things in linux or write scripts or whatever other people do, which limits what I'm prepared to install and try somewhat.

 

[bingobango]

Thanks for taking the time to answer!

Re question 3 - I used the noobs method (see post 2) to move some apps to sd without rooting- but I read that these need to be pu back into the phone memory before rooting..?

 

[shauny13]

yes it is advisable. However i didn't & never had any problems.

 

[bingobango]

Followed guides.
Installed HBOOT drivers
Installed HTC sync then removed it.
Ran unrevoked3

Got this message:

“Error: failed to get root. Is your firmware too new?”

Looking for possible solutions.
Some say to put the phone in usb disk mode? Mine was charge only..
Some say to remove some apps? Not sure which ones.
Could it be that I have some on the sd card which I moved using the noobs guide to putting apps on sd card without root?

any ideas before I try again?

 

[bingobango]

ok I *undid* this
How to move apps to sd card on an unrooted device: A noobs guide.

I set the pm setInstallLocation back to 0.

I had to run unrevoked about 4 times for various reasons.

Couple of times the zysploit service/app crashed on my phone. Another time unrevoked lost communication with the phone.

eventually it worked ok...
I confirmed via Titanium as it got root access ok.

Going to do some backups now tih Titanium and mybackup.

Anything else?

Was worried there for a bit! phew

 

[barefootpilot]

Sounds like you had some issues there - glad it worked out OK. I managed to root first time with no problems but then I had not done the sd card app thing. Also I used unrevoked on linux (via boot cd) which I think was easier as you didn't have to mess with the HTC sync/drivers in Windows. Anyway, if you are up and running now then that's great news.

Most importantly now, go into the recovery mode on the phone and do a nandroid backup (backup from the 'backup & restore' option of the recovery screen), this is the one that will save you if you try to install a custom ROM and it goes wrong.

I would suggest after titanium/mybackup/nandroid that you connect the phone to your pc and backup the contents of the sd card too, as by then it will have all the backups stored on it.

 

[SUroot]

ok I *undid* this
How to move apps to sd card on an unrooted device: A noobs guide.

I set the pm setInstallLocation back to 0.

Indeed, Unrevoked installs superuser app, which is then forced to SD by this "pm setinstalllocation 2" and can't run properly.

 

[bingobango]

Arrgggh! I ran a nandroid backup by using rommanager to boot into recovery - all went with the backup - but when I chose to reboot - I am now stuck in an endless boot cycle.

Phone shows the O2 splash screen, then screen goes black and it goes to the same screen again - it nevers gets past it!

What can I do??!

 

[barefootpilot]

First thing to try is remove the battery. Take it out for a few seconds, then put it back and try rebooting.

If that doesn't help then remove battery again and this time reboot into recovery using the 'hold down the "volume down" key while turning on' method and get into the recovery menu from there. Then you can try restoring the backup and rebooting again.

Might be worth doing a full wipe (system reset) and dalvik cache wipe (from the advanced option) prior to running the restore.

For what it's worth after the first backup and ROM install I never used ROM manager again. I don't think it works very well (I had issues with my first attempt at restoring) - it's much, much better to get used to the recovery menu and running backups, flashes and restores from there.

Hope this helps.

 

[bingobango]

OK running recovery now as the battery removal didnt help.

I didnt do a full wipe or cache wipe yet - I take it its ok to try the restore first? Bit frantic~!

I also posted on the root forum...

 

[DesireMe]

Be nice to keep the progress in here too, or link to the other thread, as i'm reading with interest.