Posted this on the admire forums to help some people learn and understand, figured you guys might enjoy or find this information useful.
Ok so you all face a dire issue, what 160MB's of internal /data storage? thats like 5 apps now a days. so im gunna give you some tips on how to get the most out of it.
1) links2sd/apps2sd - these are the biggest best solutions assuming you have a big/fast enough card. data2sd is a much nicer mod in that it makes it work with the device as if nothing is different but that requires a bit of kernel hackery.
2) removing bloatware does NOT give you space. they are bloat for a reason, otherwise you could uninstall em. all your apps etc get tossed in /data/app, while system ones (in the rom/gapps) get thrown in /system/app. so by removing bloat you only free up /system space which is a whole 'nother partition.
3) using the built in moving apps to sd isnt perfect, it basically splits the app and causes slowdowns etc while may not actually moving everything. sometimes it just moves maybe 2-3MB's sometimes only leaves 1MB depends on teh app.
So i imagine you are prolly wondering great so how is this helpful? im getting to it you impatient people
. i said removing bloat wont gain you more space on /data, but it does free up space on system. you could then take your fav app (lets say for instance facebook) and install it into system. then you would have teh app but it wouldnt take up "noticeable" space, i say noticeable because you can then use facebook and still have teh same amount of storage free to use with the market/settings etc.
Now here is where things get tricky, lets say facebook gets an update. well package manager downloads the update and looks to replace facebook but cant cuz it doesnt have root permissions, so whats it do? sticks the new one in /data/app taking up your space and leaving the one in system app (yes this is how it is done for most the apps you have). the biggest offender to this is something like google maps where 30 MB's is now taken up by it on both partitions, doesnt sound very fair now does it?
now im gunna walk you through how to beat this system, you are gunna need to be rooted. you can do this manually but im lazy and id rather pay 5 bucks to have an app do it for me. what app? titanium backup. a little known feature of teh premium version is schedules, i have 5 on my device that run between 2-5am. if you wish to do it manually, using a file manager or adb shell you can move the apk's over to where they need to be.
what this schedule does is grab any updated versions of apps and puts them into /system for you, thus clearing up space on /data of those duplicated apk's
.
my personal setup basically means if i delete any apps they get removed from my backups, if i play a game and the data changes (like beating that one damn level on bad piggies), if there is a newer versions of the app etc etc. so that at worst case i lose my phone or its broken i can grab all my data and restore and worst case i lose 24 hours worth of stuff. i also use titanium media sync to backup my titanium backup folder to dropbox and my shabbypenguin.com domain every night so i have online copies.
Of course this isnt teh end all be all solution as you are still limited to what space you have on system (this is where removing things like live wallpapers you dont use comes in handy
). combined with other techniques you stand a fairly good chance of improving your experience though.
i believe i covered all the bases, anyone wish to add something lemme know
Ok so you all face a dire issue, what 160MB's of internal /data storage? thats like 5 apps now a days. so im gunna give you some tips on how to get the most out of it.
1) links2sd/apps2sd - these are the biggest best solutions assuming you have a big/fast enough card. data2sd is a much nicer mod in that it makes it work with the device as if nothing is different but that requires a bit of kernel hackery.
2) removing bloatware does NOT give you space. they are bloat for a reason, otherwise you could uninstall em. all your apps etc get tossed in /data/app, while system ones (in the rom/gapps) get thrown in /system/app. so by removing bloat you only free up /system space which is a whole 'nother partition.
3) using the built in moving apps to sd isnt perfect, it basically splits the app and causes slowdowns etc while may not actually moving everything. sometimes it just moves maybe 2-3MB's sometimes only leaves 1MB depends on teh app.
So i imagine you are prolly wondering great so how is this helpful? im getting to it you impatient people
. i said removing bloat wont gain you more space on /data, but it does free up space on system. you could then take your fav app (lets say for instance facebook) and install it into system. then you would have teh app but it wouldnt take up "noticeable" space, i say noticeable because you can then use facebook and still have teh same amount of storage free to use with the market/settings etc.Now here is where things get tricky, lets say facebook gets an update. well package manager downloads the update and looks to replace facebook but cant cuz it doesnt have root permissions, so whats it do? sticks the new one in /data/app taking up your space and leaving the one in system app (yes this is how it is done for most the apps you have). the biggest offender to this is something like google maps where 30 MB's is now taken up by it on both partitions, doesnt sound very fair now does it?
now im gunna walk you through how to beat this system, you are gunna need to be rooted. you can do this manually but im lazy and id rather pay 5 bucks to have an app do it for me. what app? titanium backup. a little known feature of teh premium version is schedules, i have 5 on my device that run between 2-5am. if you wish to do it manually, using a file manager or adb shell you can move the apk's over to where they need to be.
what this schedule does is grab any updated versions of apps and puts them into /system for you, thus clearing up space on /data of those duplicated apk's
.my personal setup basically means if i delete any apps they get removed from my backups, if i play a game and the data changes (like beating that one damn level on bad piggies), if there is a newer versions of the app etc etc. so that at worst case i lose my phone or its broken i can grab all my data and restore and worst case i lose 24 hours worth of stuff. i also use titanium media sync to backup my titanium backup folder to dropbox and my shabbypenguin.com domain every night so i have online copies
.Of course this isnt teh end all be all solution as you are still limited to what space you have on system (this is where removing things like live wallpapers you dont use comes in handy
). combined with other techniques you stand a fairly good chance of improving your experience though.i believe i covered all the bases, anyone wish to add something lemme know
xD
